Fancy new street signs started going up in Oak Harbor this week, producing the first publicly recognizable fruits of the Windjammer Plan.
The plan, adopted to boost business downtown, attract investment and give the city a new tourist-friendly look, has cost the city roughly $155,000 since its conception.
The plan has a vision of implementing $32 million in improvements. The first concrete — or steel — sign of that plan is the new street signs, which cost $24,000, just a tiny fraction in the grand scheme of things.
City workers Rick Fakkema and Bob Williams started placing the signs this week. “We’re not even half done yet,” Fakkema said Thursday. The pair were installing a big blue sign with the yellow sails of the Windjammer logo on Highway 20, just south of Barrington Drive.
There are smaller versions of the signs in the business district of Pioneer Way. Others will go up in various locations, including Midway and Swantown, pointing the way to essential services and various tourist attractions such as the pool, marina, Harborside Shops, Windjammer Park, and Whidbey Golf & Country Club.
The signs were well received on Pioneer Way, where shop owners were instrumental in their development. “They’re working great,” said Phil Sikes, owner of Whidbey Wild Birds, on Friday. “People are loving them. I think they’re really going to help out.”
Steve Powers, city development director, describes the new markers as “wayfinding signs” that will direct visitors to various locations. Because of the consistent color theme and logo, tourists will quickly learn where to look for information on their trips around town.
“It replaces a hodgepodge of signs with a unified sign,” Powers said.
The cost of the sign project, which includes $24,000 for fabrication and $10,000 for design, is low, thanks to the Greater Oak Harbor Chamber of Commerce.
“It would have cost a lot more without their initial legwork,” Powers said. A chamber committee decided on the types of signs needed and their location in a project that took many months to see to completion.
Marcia Van Dyke, publisher of the Whidbey News-Times, sat on the chamber committee that spent many hours talking about signs. She credited city employee Rob Voigt with giving the committee a lot of valuable information, and Powers for his patient work with the State Department of Transportation, which finally allowed some needed variations in its highway signage policies.
“They look great,” Van Dyke said of the new signs. “I know everybody’s thrilled about it.”
The signs are the second major milestone in the long road toward fully implementing the Windjammer Plan. The first was a new Web site at www.oakharbor
comeashore.com which is named after the city’s new slogan, “Oak Harbor – Come Ashore.”
The Windjammer Plan cost $48,000 and was developed by consultant Roger Brooks. It’s being implemented with the help of another consultant, Tom Beckwith, who signed an 18-month, $135,000 contract about a year ago.
