The Finance Committee met 04/21/2025. One of the items they took up was a request to approve taking $20,006 left over from a furniture upgrades project and a lighting upgrades project and using it to cover the cost of installing new signage in the City Center/Fox Commons building after the redevelopment project is completed.
This item was initially recommended for denial but was then referred back to the committee for further discussion. The committee ended up voting unanimously to recommend the carryover request be approved with the requirement that when the signage costs were known and action was ready to be taken the item be brought before the committee and Council for final approval.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
Director of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities Dean Gazza told the committee that there were numerous tenants in the building including Trinity, City Hall, Building for Kids, Lawrence University, Mosaic, Prevea, Gener8tor, Wild Goose, AASD, Soar, Valley New School, Hoffman, J Geiger, and ASCO. Now that the entire building had been redeveloped and updated, they would like to update the signage across all of the sections so that it is uniform.
They did not actually have a dollar figure for how much the new signage would cost. Director Gazza said that it had cost around $25,000 to put signage in the common space of the 5th and 6th floor of City Center. However, for this new signage the city would not be paying for the entire sign but, rather, for a place on the sign, possibly 1/10th.
The purpose of being on the sign would be the help people find City Hall more easily. Although City Hall was accessible and clearly visible from Appleton Street, people might not know where to go if they tried to get to it from the east inside the Fox Commons building. Director Gazza likened the need for interior signs in this situation to the need for interior signs in a building like Fox Valley Tech where people need help finding specific departments or offices.
The committee members recognized the value in having appropriate signage throughout the complex. Their concern was with the lack of a definitive cost, and the general sense seemed to be that $20,000 was a very high estimate.
Additionally, Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) noted that the city was already paying Pfefferle to be in the building and she wondered whether updating signage ought to be Pfefferle’s responsibility.
The committee ended up deciding that updating the signage was a reasonable request but they still wanted to review and give final approval to the project once an actual cost was known. To that end, they voted to approve the carryover request with the requirement that it come back before them for a final vote once a dollar figure was known and staff was ready to move forward with the project.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1283589&GUID=A9618171-A757-4284-835B-B7C99C938E10
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