Coming soon: Better, unified Q-C signage
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Community, togetherness, cooperation, success.
That was a main theme this morning during the Destination Quad-Cities Breakfast on the Isle of Capri Conference Center in Bettendorf hosted by the Quad-City Convention & Visitors Bureau.
City, business, tourism and chambers leaders heard updates on various projects in the Quad-Cities. In addition, Joe Taylor, visitors bureau president, shared updates on progress in response last year’s visitor, consultant Bill Geist and his recommendations for improvement to the area.
That included news that the Wayfinding signage project in each city will be completed next month.
But coupled with the updates was what Taylor said is a clear message of togetherness and sense of community that organizations and municipalities are experiencing in working on specific projects.
“Today demonstrated how we are working together,” he said after the meeting, in referring to how the updates were presented. “Working together on all these projects will probably accelerate ... a synergy.”
Ray Forsythe, economic development director for the City of Moline, also brought home the point in his presentation, saying a great example of success is seeing all come together in “good community development.”
Among updates was one highlighted by Taylor after last year’s assessment by Geist.
The president of Zeitgeist Consulting, a Madison, Wis.,-based consulting firm, Geist was hired by the visitors bureau to complete the Quad-Cities’ first-ever destination assessment and review. To conduct the assessment, Geist and his assistant spent five days in January 2007 secretly shopping Quad-City attractions, hotels, restaurants and other amenities to determine the area’s strengths and weaknesses.
He listed several concerns and things to worked on, including connecting attractions and other sites from one city to another. “The one thing that holds you back is there is nothing to connect the dots,” Geist said last year in explaining that one of his first recommendations for the Quad-Cities would be to improve signage.
Signage “is the one way to jumpstart this critical mass idea,” he said, adding that signage not only directs visitors but makes the distance between attractions seem shorter. “This assures visitors they are in a place they feel welcome.”
By using a system of color coding, each city would be identified by a color that would be repeated on signs for the different attractions. The goal is to create a cohesiveness between the cities and their corridors.
The signage proposal, first unveiled in 2001 by the visitors bureau, is a plan that identified 217 signs that could be erected to promote 85 Quad-City attractions. The plan was developed by the Traverse City, Mich.-based Corbin Design.
Taylor said crews in each city will begin implementing the signs next month. “We hope to have it all done by June 30,” he said.
Doug Schorpp can be contacted at (563) 383-2292 or dschorpp@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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