Bethany Beach looks to get splashy with new banners

Bethany Beach Town Council members this week continued their discussion of how the town might be able to better advertise the events it hosts without continuing to add to the damage done by placing banners on the lifeguard station, as has been the tradition since the structure was renovated.

Town Manager Cliff Graviet offered council members at their Jan. 17 workshop some images of large banner displays used at the Strathmore performing arts facility near Bethesda, Md., as well as some of a smaller scale, and presented ideas for where similar banners might be displayed in prominent areas around the intersection of Routes 1 and 26.

Graviet noted that one notion of where to put a multi-part banner – at the northwest corner of the intersection, on the former Christian Church/Neff property now owned by the town – wasn’t as clear of an option as might have been thought. The right-of-way from the state-controlled roadways means the town doesn’t actually own the area of the corner closest to the road. Instead, town-owned property begins nearly 40 feet back from the roadway, which would push any banner there well out of the view of many passersby.

Instead, Graviet proposed the council consider using the exterior corner or corners of the town-owned property nearest the roadways, utilizing a large banner in the center of the display and two smaller banners angled back from the sides of the main banner. The main banner would be intended to display repeating information, such as the name of and information about town-hosted events, in a larger size, with the smaller side banners being available for display of the dates and other information that would change each year.

He theorized that arrangement would help event organizers keep their advertising costs down by only requiring them to replace the smaller banners each year.

“The larger banners are going to be expensive,” he said. “We can work with these entities to make sure they have something that is tasteful and will stand out. It would be semi-permanent, and the date banners would be changed out for events whose dates change.”

However, Councilwoman Carol Olmstead noted that the vinyl banners her Cultural and Historical Affairs Committee uses for its annual Seaside Craft Show can have the dates changed each year without replacing the entire banner.

Graviet said the banners in his examples were of different construction, one that wouldn’t make for easy changes. And representatives of the Bethany-Fenwick Area Chamber of Commerce noted that trying to keep banners for their events in good condition meant they were using a less-expensive kind of banner – one that is not reused each year. Recent examples included the banners for the Exercise like the Eskimos event on New Year’s Day and the Wags, Witches & Warlocks Halloween event in October.

Council members also have to take into consideration how visible the signs would be from the roadways, based on the potential locations and configurations. Graviet said the only question he had about visibility under the configuration he was proposing was for northbound traffic on Route 1. He suggested the council consider placing a double-sided banner at the southern edge of the town hall property to pick up the eyes of those travelers, in a location where it would additionally serve to disguise an unsightly pole.

“The town would have its own set of banners to display when there are no events,” he noted, while organizers of events that aren’t town-sponsored would provide their own banners for those events, created to the dimensions required by the town’s banner displays and in a style approved by the town manager’s office.

Council members discussed a variety of locations in the areas presented by Graviet as options, including both corners of the Church/Neff property, the landscaped triangle of land between Route 26 and Kent Avenue, and the site to the south of town hall.

Olmstead also noted that the town does have times when more than one event is coming up in the near future. Graviet said that, at times like those, the town could use its own signage on the main sign location and smaller banners for the individual events on the side displays, perhaps with a way to do an add-on display for their dates. When event organizers decide they can’t afford to have banners for each location, or only the smaller ones, different configurations could be arranged, he added.

In addition to the newly proposed locations for the event signage, Graviet noted that the new streetlight poles along Garfield Parkway – installed under the preliminary Streetscape renovations – will accommodate banners of 30-by-80-inches in size, which will also be available for event organizers to utilize. That serves to mollify the loss of the lifeguard station as a location for such displays, which the council has unofficially ruled out due to the damage it has caused to the structure.

“It’s going to be significant for the community in terms of the look,” Graviet said of the impact of the addition of the proposed banner locations.

But Vice-Mayor Jack Gordon said that any of the proposed banner locations would be preferable to putting banners in front of the wooden totem-pole-style carving “Chief Little Owl” that’s a major town landmark. That is the location where the Wags, Witches & Warlocks banner was displayed, and council members have already expressed mixed feelings about its use, though it was regarded as useful in its prominence.

Graviet pointed out that the council had discussed as many as four locations for banners on Tuesday, which sparked some concern among council members that it would be too much if all were used. Councilman Lew Killmer and Mayor Tony McClenny said they favored double-sided signs located on both Route 1 and Route 26, to catch as much traffic as possible with just two sign locations.

The council also debated whether to favor larger banners, such as those used at Strathmore (estimated to be at least 25 feet tall from the bottom of the banner to the top, display holder not included), or smaller ones, which might risk not being legible from the roadway. Council members seemed to generally favor something smaller, while McClenny said he’d like to see if the proposed CAD drawings of such an installation would prove whether the smaller banners could be seen.

Graviet said he would also have temporary poles installed on Route 1 in the approximate location of his proposal for signage there, to allow council members to get a better idea of exactly what location they were discussing.

“We’re going to have to move pretty fast, because events are coming up that are going to need the banners,” Olmstead noted on Tuesday.