It’s time for the public to weigh in on what they want San Pedro’s long-planned lighted archway sign to look like.
The gateway sign, which has been in the works for several years, will go above Sixth Street near Harbor Boulevard as a way to let visitors know there are restaurants, shops and other attractions across from the waterfront.
There are three options on which to vote. All are somewhat similar, featuring simple lettering on a dark blue background. At night, blue neon will light up the sign.
“Hopefully this (process) will get a wide swath of the community” to comment, said Alan Johnson, who helped guide the planning under the umbrella of the San Pedro Historic Waterfront Business Improvement District.
The design was aimed at linking into the town’s historic art deco architecture, Johnson said.
“We looked at the buildings around the area like the City Hall, the Maritime Museum,” he said, “and thought about what would have gone with them in their day.”
They wanted to keep the message simple, he said, and the appearance of the sign classy and simple.
“We felt if we tried to pack too much into the sign, it would take away from it,” Johnson said. “Less is more here.”
Even the neon will be simple and straight-forward, without the fancier metal lighted “channels” so often used with those designs.
“It will spill out so it will be readable,” Johnson said, “but we didn’t want different colors.”
The goal is to better highlight San Pedro’s quaint downtown shopping, arts and dining district, which, Johnson said, too often can be not seen as one drives through the town on Harbor Boulevard, where the focus is generally on the waterfront to the east.
While earlier plans called for a fully arched sign spanning the street and anchored on both sides, complications with an existing Los Angeles Department of Water and Power vault in the area forced those plans to change to what now will be a cantilevered design. The sign will be…
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