New signs will aid city visitors

During the past couple of weeks, about 39 new informational signs have been strategically placed throughout the city.

Project engineer Holden Wright said 22 large, metal signs at 5-feet wide by 12-feet tall, 14 small, metal signs at 5-wide and 4-feet tall and three little, metal parking signs at 2-feet wide by 31/2-feet tall were purchased; and almost all of them have been placed in the city.

Wright said two more signs will go up after the street construction has been completed on East Teton Boulevard and Second South.

According to Wright, the city formed a sign committee to look at the different informational signs and find grants to pay for most of the signs expense.

The signs aren’t designed to benefit locals.

“It’s not going to help the city, it’s going to help the visitors,” Wright said.

For example: an out-of-town bus driver looking for Wolves Stadium or the Green River High School will not have a problem finding it with the new informational signs. Another example Wright gave was how hard it is for a visitor to find the grocery store.

Most visitors expect it to be on either Flaming Gorge Way or Uinta Drive, but it isn’t. The new signs will help a visitor find the grocery store easily.

“They are very easy to see and it gets rid of a lot of those little signs we’ve put up over the years. That gets distracting,” he said.

The project was actually awarded and contracted out to Wyoming Signs out of Mills, who was the low bidder on the project.

The signs cost a total of $107,542. Half of it was paid for by a Wyoming Business Council Enhancement grant; while the other half was paid for by the city. Wright said the city had set aside funds for this project during the fiscal year 2015-2016 budget.

The company’s employees started working on the signs in April.

“The signs take a while to make. They are all handmade,” Wright explained.

Putting up the signs, on the other hand, didn’t take the company long at all.

The blue and green signs were up within two weeks.

All of the signs are bolted down and designed to snap off at the bottom if someone hit it with their vehicle.

Wright said in the future, city employees can take care of the signs in their own shop.

He said the signs currently have a UV protective coating on them that should last 10 years.

“We enjoy projects like this because it’s very visible,” Wright said.