The town of Dillon’s signs at the corner of East Anemone Trail and U.S. Highway 6 have some LED panels that are failing, so the Dillon Town Council voted April 14 to replace the LED signs.

To replace the signs, the town will spend around $76,000 from its Dillon Urban Renewal Authority budget. It will not change the stone structure, which houses two LED signs, according to town planner Jonathon Blank. The council passed a resolution approving a contract with a signage company in its regular meeting after discussing the project in its work session.

Blank also told the council about other potential signage additions and improvements that the town’s economic development advisory committee had discussed, including the development of a “comprehensive” wayfinding plan.

“I know that’s a big thing,” Blank said. “I’ve heard in a lot of meetings that we need better signage around town. 

A town staff memo stated the advisory committee recommended updating some business directory signs in the town. The memo stated that improving wayfinding in Dillon would help guide people to businesses as well as public areas like the town’s parks, parking lots and amphitheater.

Blank asked the council if it would like town staff to work on a comprehensive wayfinding program. Council member Barbara Richard said the town has needed — and the council has discussed — improved wayfinding for “a long, long time.” She said that if the town has money to pursue a comprehensive wayfinding plan, she would support it.

Other council members agreed, saying they would consider comprehensive wayfinding the second or third most important project of the four sign-related projects Blank mentioned at the meeting.

Those other projects included one which the economic advisory committee and planning and zoning commission unanimously supported at a joint meeting, according to committee member Eddie O’Brien, who was in attendance for the Town Council’s sign discussion. The proposed project would replace one or more existing signs at the corner of Highway 6 and Lake Dillon Drive.

Four total signs sit on either side of Lake Dillon Drive, next to a strip mall and the Homewood Suites, respectively. On the strip mall side, the signs currently advertise a liquor store, pizza place and ski rental business. Assistant public works director Evan Dawson said one of the signs, advertising the liquor store and pizza restaurant, is not owned by the town, but the other three signs are. The signs across the street are currently blank. 

Blank said putting in LED signs would allow the businesses advertised on the signs to rotate. He highlighted that they could advertise businesses deeper in the town core instead of only advertising ones in the strip mall.

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Council member Kyle Hendricks expressed concern about replacing any signs at the town’s Lake Dillon Drive entrance with LED ones, saying he thought it would look “super tacky.”

“It makes me think of when you’re in Phoenix or somewhere in Arizona, and you’re looking at the pretty countryside, and then all of a sudden there’s an LED sign, you know, for a casino or something,” Hendricks said.

Richard and council member Linda Oliver also expressed concern about having LED signs at that entrance to the town. Mayor Carolyn Skowyra, mayor pro tem Joshua Samuel and council member Rachel Tuyn said they liked the idea of the LED signs.

“I think there’s a way to do it without them being bright and glaring,” Skowyra said. “Tone it down a little bit, or put it on a night mode, or whatever it needs to be.”

The last sign-related project the Town Council discussed would put kiosks with screens at the planned electric vehicle charging station behind the current LED sign. The kiosks would rotate advertisements for local businesses and town events, promoting them to the people using the EV chargers, town manager Nathan Johnson said. 

Hendricks asked if there might be a better place for small advertising kiosks where more people would see them, like in the town’s parks or at its marina. Tuyn pointed out that the people using the EV chargers have to wait around for their cars to charge.

After discussing the potential signage projects, the council members agreed to support the replacement of LED panels on the current LED sign, discuss the addition of one or more LED signs on Lake Dillon Drive at a future meeting, and pursue the other ideas of comprehensive wayfinding and EV charging kiosks if the town had the budget to do so.