HOUGHTON - Houghton downtown merchants got a sneak peek at prototypes for Houghton's new downtown signage Wednesday morning.
Karyn Hanks of The Marketing Department showed off the new designs to the Downtown Merchants Association, which included directional signage, parking, a "walk your bike" sign and a mock-up of a website for downtown.
The signs are color-coded: light green backgrounds for parking, orange for the police station and city center and dark red for shopping and restaurants.
Bill Fink said with the trend toward earthy tones in websites, maintaining contrast is important.
"If we get too little contrast, we start going red and dark brown, we get a lot of people who reach a certain stature in life - such as me - who can't see that contrast," he said.
Contrast was an issue for several people with the directional signage, saying the combination of white text on a light green background was too hard to read.
Hanks said the website, which will go live in 60 to 90 days, would include such things as business and recreation listings, an events calendar and listings for available units for residents.
"We want to encourage people to live downtown," she said. "People who live downtown, shop downtown."
City Manager Scott MacInnes said there's also a possibility of adding webcams in downtown.
The ideas are outgrowths of the marketing plan for downtown The Marketing Department put together last year.
Susie Landers of Good Times Music asked about the possibility of marking parking places. She said she has effectively lost one spot by her store, as uncertainty about the boundaries has led to two cars taking up the space that used to hold three.
Fink suggested holding a parallel parking workshop, which he said could bring people downtown who might otherwise be reluctant to come to downtown because of parking.
In response to concerns that people were having trouble locating the Keweenaw Peninsula Chamber of Commerce, MacInnes said signs may be able to be put up on U.S. 41 and M-26.
"There may be some standard MDOT signs we can do for that," he said.
Fink suggested adding ski racks to city buses and touting the option of getting picked up at the Nara Nature Park instead of making the uphill climb back to the Tech Trails.
"It becomes lift-service skiing, almost," he said.
Garrett Neese can be reached at gneese@mininggazette.com.
