Parks and Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

To order our Appleton Public Arts Committee meeting for today, Wednesday, March 4. If we could all stand and do a Pledge of Allegiance, please. All right. So first on the docket will be to just look at our minutes from our previous meeting on January 7, and I'd like to motion to approve that if I'll approve. I'll

second. Alright.

All in favor? Aye. All right. And then for our roll call for today, I am Elise Christa Michi. I am our chair. And then we also have Kim Riester.

Laura Hoekstra.

Jake Bauer.

Jane Lasty. And then, excused today, we have Luis Fernandez and Bo Vang. Alright. Do we have any public hearing or appearances that we'd like to start with? No. Okay. Then on to our action items for the day. Alright. So we will be beginning with, talking about the Houdini Welcome Tower. Steph, did you want to read the staff memo for that?

Absolutely. This 40 on? Okay. Perfect. I'll just do a quick second to introduce myself. I'm Steph Lina. I'm the new economic development specialist. I'm taking over Lily Paul's position. So I'm going to be doing the duties that she took care of. So today, we've got the discussion regarding the Houdini Welcome Tower.

We have two options before the board today. Option one is to pursue the photo contest that was discussed at the last meeting. Basically, pick a theme on what contest the committee would like to have for the contest. Option two is involving a private donor and the Year of Houdini that's taking place. It's the one hundred year anniversary of Houdini's passing this year. So a private group called the Year of Houdini is working on kind of celebrating that year. And there's going to be a celebration with a conference for the American Society of Magicians.

Did I

say that right?

No. Okay.

Can clarify for us later.

Let say that again so I can get that right. Society of American Magicians. Thank you, Tom. And a private donor is willing to pay for the cost of panels in the theme of Houdini, and then the city would actually be the ones to likely install them. So those are the two options before the board today.

Ultimately, either decide to go with a new contest and pick a theme for a new contest. It can be a photo contest or otherwise. Or go with the the Houdini option and have potentially the funds that are budgeted go towards something else later this year. Okay.

Would the crew from the Houdini project like to speak on this at all before we have our discussion? Okay. I could. You may. Welcome, Tom.

Good morning. I'm Tom Bolt. I'm a volunteer with the group that is, as Stephanie said, involved in celebrating Houdini. They're actually, we've had two events already. On October, we hosted at the Performing Arts Center the Masters of Illusion show, Very popular, there were over 1,600 people that attended that show.

And Gay Blackstone, who is the producer of that show, was traveling with it. And the mayor presented a recognition of her involvement in the art of magic and being here in Appleton. And then, I believe it was two weeks ago, there was a nice carving that was on Houdini Plaza and debuted the logo for celebrating Houdini nineteen twenty six, twenty twenty six. And there are going to be a whole series of activities, but as Stephanie said, probably the biggest thing will be the convention of the Society of American Magicians. They'll be here on the July 1 to the fourth at the Hilton.

There'll be over three fifty members of that group. I'm a member of that group. And so you're going to have a lot of magicians that are going to be in town. There'll be some private performances at Lawrence University, but there'll be an opportunity for the public to also see some of the best magic in the world, but many other ideas. Jennifer Stefani from Applin Downtown Incorporated told us of this opportunity where you're in the midst of a contest to have changes in the Houdini Tower and Houdini Plaza, which we think is a great idea, but thought that because it was the year of Houdini that perhaps our group could refresh the tower with some images of Houdini that would celebrate Houdini.

And I believe you have a proposal in front of you with a number of the images. And because of the speed at which your committee was meeting and the need to get something moving along, one of the things that's a bit of a challenge is that the city requires that the images be in the public domain. And in Jennifer's research, she was able to find a number of them, which some of them are listed and shown in the proposal. But we need to do a little more research just to make sure that we're not going to be infringing on any copyrights. And there are sites that we can go to, Library of Congress and other sites on the internet that can assure us of that.

And that was one of the requirements that the city had of us. The cost will be borne by Creative Downtown Incorporated, which is a part of the affluent Downtown Incorporated. And at least our initial proposal, just contradict you a little bit, Stephanie, we thought that because the tower is controlled by the city that the installation would be done by the city. But if that's something that the creative downtown should take care of, we'll do that. But it's owned by the city and probably safer that the city do it. But we're not we need to know how that should be done.

Steph did say the city would install.

It would install. Okay. Good. So we thought that this would be appropriate. I think, as I said earlier, the photo contest or the other contest could continue, and it does take a while to get those things done.

But we thought if this could be installed by the time of the Society of American Magicians event in July, that that would, again, be a way that the city could recognize Houdini. And they would find Houdini Plaza to be a very warm and welcoming spot. And since many of them will be walking between the Hilton And Stansbury Hall at Lawrence University, I think they'll find that Appleton has done its part to celebrate this important year of commemoration.

Well, thank you, Tom. I do have a couple questions for So what is your ideal timeline for how long the images would stay up? Do you have a preference?

Not really. Mean, again, if it's the year of Houdini, if it could be the year, all year, that would be fine. Our last major event will be October 30 at the Performing Arts Center. Lance Burton, who is a well known magician, is going to be performing. There will be some activities on the thirty first, which is the day that he died, and maybe a few other things near the end of the year.

But we thought if we could target that time in July for the Society of American Magicians, that would be ideal. But we don't have any expectations, and we don't know what the timeline of your committee and how this would fit into the city's schedule would work. And so we're I think I think our main idea is to celebrate this during the fourth of July weekend when the SAM group is there. But to me, I would love to have it all year long and beyond that. But it is Houdini Plaza.

It is called the Houdini Tower. And I think I've also spoken with the mayor and he's on board with issuing a proclamation during the time that the Society of American Magicians here. And we also have in the works a proclamation by the governor of Wisconsin that will also recognize this group being here. So we're trying to raise this up. Many of you know the Houdini story, but it's a really amazing American story and rags to riches, and I think something that should be celebrated because oftentimes that story is neglected.

I think it's a great story and a great story of success. And Appleton should be proud of Appleton and Houdini, as Houdini was proud of saying he was from Appleton, and he did that throughout his career.

Tom, excuse me, you had mentioned some challenges with finding the photos. How many photos have you found so far?

We found many. I think Jennifer did the research. I think she found about a half a dozen that she was very confident that would be in the public domain. But because of the timing here, we're going to need to make sure that we have the 12 that would pass the requirement of the city.

So I do think that it would be beneficial if we were to go ahead with this to have a lot more than 12 if possible just for, like, curating the tower and then also ensuring, like, that they can fit within the format of the square. So I don't know if that's even possible. Alex will talk on that in a minute, it looks like.

So My understanding is that there are 12 panels that need to be replaced so that we would be looking at 12 images.

Yep.

Is it okay? I think what Elise is trying to say is the Arts Committee would like more than 12 submitted so that they can decide

I see. I'm sorry.

Which photos get picked and where they go on the tower Yeah, as the Arts

sorry.

I'm sorry.

No, no, that's okay.

Sorry, I didn't understand that.

Yeah, no, that's alright. I was just asking that and then was planning to elaborate a little. Sure. Yeah, so in here it does state that at the April meeting, if we were to go ahead with this, that we would then, as a committee, work with you to select the images that would then go in the tower. Absolutely. So we would love for more than 12 just so that we can ensure that, like, there's a like, the the aesthetic of the tower does make sense.

Sure. You know, I I I think the other thing is in the proposal, many of these images are black and white. We'd like to liven it up with more color. And some of the posters that we believe are in the public domain would be in color. But yes, we will present more than the 12 that we think would work. Think we give you the option to select which ones and where they would be placed.

Okay. Wonderful. Great. Does anyone else have any more questions for Tom while he's up here? I think Alex wants to get on next. If anyone No? Okay. Alright. Well, thank you so

much, Thank you. I appreciate it.

Also, think it's really neat that there's a bunch of magicians coming to town. I just want to say I will be a fly on the wall that whole week.

Yeah. Good morning, Public Arts Committee. Alex Schulzson, 16 West Front Street, here representing a couple of different organizations. One, Sculpture Valley because we curated that tower for a number of years prior to the city taking over. Number two, have sat on the creative committee for ADI and worked with Jennifer and probably will be working with her to source the Houdini images.

I did a cursor research as she was trying to find some examples to share with the committee of a couple of public domain websites and came up with about 70 that potentially are open to public access. So I didn't dive in deep into those options. Was just checking to see just on a cursory search of what's out there that could be public domain access. Select. The ones that are shown are part of that, but there are certainly many, many more.

So that'll be a little bit of a process to kind of read through. And certainly, I think when we get to that point, we'll probably present 20 to 30 images and we can figure out, you know, what that might look like in the tower. Speaking to the color and impact, you know, I've shared with this particular project, this committee before that for that tower to function well, it really needs to be sort of live and colorful. Sometimes when you do these photo contests, what you end up with are not such lively photographs. They might be great photographs, but they don't do a lot to enliven that downtown and particularly that tower.

So as I was thinking about this, and I don't know if this is a path we would go, but certainly some of the posters have some color that could be used as they are, maybe slightly enhanced. The other option, and I've seen this even just in my recent search, is colorizing some of the black and white photographs. It's a thing that can be done. It is done. I don't know if it's a path that we'd necessarily want to take colorizing historic photographs, but they are out there, and those are also in the public domain if we want to select those.

Or we could run them through a colorizing filter and color everything. So that's, I guess, up to the committee to have a discussion about whether that's appropriate or not. But I would certainly want a mix of live colorful images on the tower to get the impact that that that it needs for people to sort of gravitate to it and look at it. Otherwise, you're kind of blowing right past it. So that's all I have. I'm here just to answer sort of the granular questions about production. Like I say, I've been through this many times. The city's also been through it a couple times. So if there's any questions about timelines, cost, installations, park and rec is usually in and out in about two or three hours when they do the installation. They've got to open the panels.

Sometimes they have to separate the face plexi from the panel plexi, because there's actually two pieces that go in. So it can be a little challenging at times, but I think it's been working rather well for the last few years. And then I would just say that we go through, ADI goes through the selection process of the images, we're going to be cognizant of that square format. If you think back way back to the original tower build and unveiling of Houdini Plaza, we had a number of Houdini images in there and they were cropped. They weren't cropped, they're essentially like this.

And so that representation of photographs doesn't take full advantage of that sort of stacked square presentation of graphics. So I think part of that process for us will be looking at these and squaring them to see what works in that format. So you can imagine this would be in cropped and square and you may lose some of it. So it's another consideration as we select photographs. Just putting a photograph like that in a 43 by 43, it just doesn't communicate well and doesn't use that tower well. So that's something else you want to consider as we're looking through these images.

So when you bring the images back, the 20 to 30 images, will you have them cropped already? Or you're just these are the ones that we'd like to use?

I'm going ask the committee to provide some direction if you'd like to. I'm certainly willing to do, I and ADI and Jennifer and working with Tom, we can select, crop, and even suggest layouts. But we could also just put that at the hands of the committee. It's certainly we're willing to do it, I have done it, and have the confidence to do it. And we could present a number of just open images, and you guys can lay them out.

We could present 30 images in various layouts that we might think is appealing. But again, it's up to the committee to decide how you want to manage that. We're here to facilitate and I'm certainly willing to do work on this to make it look good. Again, I have the experience with that tower, I kind of understand how it works and the machinations of those four sides all kind of working together. But again, it's up to the committee and up to the city to decide how you want to manage that.

And that's something we could definitely talk more about at the next meeting if this is the option that we do go ahead with. So I would like to thank you, Alex, for your time. Is there anything you'd like to say before I open the discussion up to the rest of my committee?

No. I'm just I'm happy that we're considering this option. I think it's a great opportunity to go back to the original installation, highlight the name of the square, and bring focus back to Houdini, particularly this year. And it's not going to cost the city much to produce these panels just to install them. So there's always that. But yeah, think it's a fantastic opportunity. And it also takes the pressure off so you have some time to think about what you want to do on the next cycle of this Houdini Tower and competitions.

Okay. You just said that it wouldn't cost the city much. So can you just elaborate a little bit more like where that

I just meant the cost of the install itself.

All right. So the sorry, just to clarify, the cost of the install, does that come out of the Public Arts Committee budget or is that some other budget?

It would just be labor costs for Parks and Rec.

Okay. Thank

you. Which they would absorb.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right. So I'd love if the rest of the committee can maybe give some input or insight on this. And keep in mind also so this is option two that we've primarily talked about, right? So we do have the option one on our agenda as well today. So we can discuss about both of those.

Well, I like option two. I particularly like these old posters. I think they look really good. I think that making sure we can find ones that fit the square format might be a little challenging with the posters because most of them are going to be your 8x11 type format. But I particularly like that idea, and that's what I would lean towards myself.

I do wanna say too that just because we do go with this idea, we do have a budget still for eventually doing a contest. And so we could have that be something I believe Kara and I had spoken, and you had mentioned that that budget is something that could be used for next year as well. Correct?

Correct. We could if for

some

reason the next context isn't initiated and, like, the panels aren't procured by the end of the year, or we could order them by the end of the year but they're not received, we can carry those funds over. Okay.

Would you include photo captions for the photos or and the posters, so an exclamation of what they are?

You mean, like, on the tower?

Somewhere so people are walking by so they would understand what they're looking at.

Or maybe there could be, like, a QR resource or something? Is that okay. That is yet to be determined, Alex?

It's a possibility. I know when we did the first series of photographs, we had taglines on each of the images. After that, we isolated all that and put it on a single panel so we didn't disturb the image itself. There's limited real estate. We didn't want that copy.

So we pulled all the copy off and on the back, lower back panel, there was a section with the QR that talked about the installation, that it was a contest. If you want to see who the artists were, you could scan the code and do that. We could do something really similar with this. Pick one of the images and then just add a little bit of copy on the bottom, tells what the tower installation's about, why it's here, the celebration, and then QR if you want to visit more things related to the one hundred year anniversary, which would be fantastic. It would date that panel, you wouldn't want to leave it up there for And too I don't anticipate we will.

I would think in spring of next year we'll be moving into another contest. So I think that would work if that's something the committee would consider. And according to the proposal of the panels, they're removed, the property of the city like the previous ones have been taken over. Something that could be used again down the road if we want to put it back in.

Yeah. And I personally think that that is a really lovely gift. Thank you. Because that could be something that we could utilize when we don't have the budget for maybe a contest. Okay.

Yeah. I kind of want to second what Jake said. I'm also just a fan of this option. I think leaning into the Houdini theme is fantastic and these posters are really eye catching. Yeah, my only concern is, yeah, I'd hate to see them cropped to lose, you know, top or bottom of these great posters. So I was wondering maybe you've already thought of this. Would it work to have some kind of background, like complementary background framing the posters so that they're not cropped?

Yes. I mean, there's a couple ways of doing it, and I've given it some thoughts. There's a really fantastic graphic it's not in this one, but really bright fantastic graphic of him doing that upside down zigzag escape if that's not

what it's

called. That one you could actually split into two panels and it would stack nicely. So there is, depending on how we do this, there is an option if there's a really great poster graphic, you can cut that in half and it becomes two panels and then you put a photo on top of it. That's one way to preserve that orientation if it's something that is really kind of nice looking. There's a little bit of a split there.

So it's not like it's just a small break. There's a relatively large break between those boxes in the tower. It may or may not work, preference would be not. But even if you look at the top one here, you could see that crop square. I think that one could actually work as it is with maybe a little bit of extra background on the left and right side of that top image. Can make that one look great as a square. I'm sure I could find other ones that could be cropped or have backgrounds added.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

I personally do think that well, first of all, I would love to accommodate this theme for the magicians. I think it's kind of neat to have that experience here in our community. However, I do want to make sure that we do, at some point, go ahead with a a contest because as part of the public arts committee, I think it's really important to have that community engagement as well. I think Tom had mentioned on this that it would provide us actually then with a little bit more time to solidify a theme. So I don't see that this would necessarily take away from the contest.

If anything, it would just give us more time to solidify that theme and then be able to maybe, you know, get the contest out and then produce the panels with our budget and then to have them out, you know, next year when the weather's warm again so that then the Houdini images could, you know, be up throughout the year, and then we'd have more images in our collection later on too. So Alex?

Yeah. Now, I'm just going give you some food for thought because this is something that I've thought about for a decade with this tower that we had explored a long time ago about installing LED panels so that you can change our work on the fly. And as we think about the costs that go into this on an annual basis, I know this is slightly off topic, but as we're thinking about contests and moving forward, spending $25 $3,000 every year, It was never cost effective back then, but these days you can get a small LED panel, the costs have come down substantially. So you could imagine that those 12 panels being controlled by the Arts Committee and having weekly changes. There's just a ton of opportunity to do this kind of thing.

You could run many, many photo contests and art contests. It would be a challenge, and I'm not saying that's something to talk about right now, but I want to plant that seed just because I think it could be incredible for that tower to do so much more than it's doing right now and really engage the community. And maybe it's time now because the costs are at that point that we can start talking about how that might work, if it could work.

All right. Thank you.

So I agree. I love this idea. I love this concept. Embracing that would be great in the tower, its namesake. I think as long as we can find those images and they can work in that format, I think it would be it would be fantastic, and we appreciate the edit is being donated as well. We appreciate that and and then gifting it to us as well. That's that's all great. So I'm I'm on board with that as well. Mhmm. And then to reiterate, Elise's point, that gives us the opportunity then to not have to make a decision on the fly in terms of what that next theme is.

I think we need to be thoughtful and purposeful with what this next contest is, and that will allow us to get these images changed out and proceed that way.

Okay. Do we have any more discussion on this matter or no? Oh, Alex. You do.

If you decide and take a vote and go forward with this, maybe have a quick discussion about what you'd like to see us present to you as we talked about these options. Give us some direction on what you prefer to be presented with to make your choices. And that will give us a means of sort of doing all this background work and giving something to you that's like, okay, well this makes it easy for us to decide which way to move forward. So maybe include that as part of the motion and when you get to that point.

So can I ask the question? So the next steps for Option two, there's a little bit of a timeline here. So the proposed timeline would have April 1, the committee selects the images. So if we tell you to bring us 30 images not cropped, not color corrected, like, is there are we still going to be able to meet the timeline? I'm just you know, how we react to that kind of has to do with the timeline. How much time is it going to take to do that cropping and everything? Is it more conducive to doing it for a have us to belabor

big brush question. Or Because if that's what you'd like, and we present just here's the batch of imagery, here's 30 images, which one do want to select? Now we have to come, now you have to, you guys have to do the work to crop, recolor, figure that out. Or you come back to me and say, We'd like these images. Please crop, recolor, and do the work.

So at some point, And someone's got to do that as I've said, and ADI are willing to do that. So it probably makes sense from my standpoint to do that so that by April 1, you already have all that sort of in place. And I would even suggest putting a timeline before April 1 so that you guys can see it a week before your meeting and be able to sort of digest that so we could present options prior to the meeting instead of, I mean, get it on the agenda packet so you can have a chance to digest it and figure

it out.

Sorry. That's okay. I was just going to say because it would be nice to be able to then, if we're having you crop and color them, to then also then see what that looks like because, know, how are going

you to crop and color them? Might say, I like these, but can you do something a little different?

We haven't gone it's going this say having the image and then next to it, this is what we propose to crop, or how to crop it.

That works, too, yeah.

And is that something we can well, I guess we would kind of have to think about that today, correct? Yeah. I think that having some creative, like, collaboration on this would be great. I do like the idea of having, like, the selection of images potentially sent to us prior to the April 1 meeting, if possible, so that we then can, maybe review them. I don't know how that would work with, like, having to have another meeting or if we would be able to have some sort of selection before that that so that then maybe at the April 1 meeting, we could talk about the 12 that we then kind of have narrowed down that we could then crop or if that would be something that would come up at, like, a May meeting.

If Creative Downtown Inc. Was to submit the images and maybe how they would crop it in time for your meeting packet, we could have you vote on your preferences. Maybe we do, like, little online Mhmm. Digital vote for the committee just to open up discussion so we can present the results of the vote at that April 1 meeting. Okay. And then that would help you navigate prioritizing. We also hope to have a little tower that I might be having my husband build right now.

Cara's husband's gonna build us a

Haven't given him a deadline, so if we don't have a nice tower, it'll be a cardboard one that I made.

I can help you with some paper mache. I mean

Because we've we've heard feedback from the group that one of the things that's hard is when we're selecting images, how do we figure out where they go?

Yeah. And we're all artists. Right? So to have a visual model in front of us and to be able to move the images around would be of benefit.

I wish we could have relocated the maquette that I used to use myself, but it must be MIA.

We don't know where the maquette is, Alex. Dang. Know. A nice little town. We'll put a wanted poster out for that.

I do think yeah. So I think, you know, we do have some I mean, in my opinion, for conditions, it would be to have still the creative selection to have, you know, for our committee to have say in the final images. And that, you know, being that this is covered the costs are covered by, like, not taken out of our budget for a feature contest so that they're covered by private donor and, you know, other outside budgets. And that I think to, you know, having that these are then our property to use in future manners.

So sorry, I'm very much a schedule driven person. So you're still going through the process of looking for images. Without cropping, without anything, when would you be able to bring those images to us for saying, Okay, this is the 30 we want considered. What does that time frame look like for you?

I think staff suggested that we do this at the that that is provided prior to the next meeting, but not any sooner that you're having that deliberation at the next meeting.

Yeah, but we were going to see the images, vote on it prior to the next meeting.

So like a week before or yeah.

Yeah, so the committee packets, we would want

let me pull up a calendar.

You got it open, Dave?

I do. Yeah. So the committee packet for the April 1 meeting would typically be sent on Thursday, March 26. Obviously, we would need some time to assemble that packet. So I guess just off the cuff here, was thinking if, Creative Downtown Inc.

And partners could have their, submittal proposals to staff by Friday, March 20, that would give us a few days to do what we need to to sort of compile them together, make Survey. Create a survey of some kind to capture the the votes of the of the committee. And then, you know, around that sort of midweek prior to the April 1 meeting, no later than the twenty sixth, that we would have it out to the committee, which would then allow the committee several several days to digest the information, to cast their votes, and then we could come to the meeting on April 1 knowing which images ranks the the highest and allow for some continued conversation in the committee setting. That seem to align with committee's line of thinking?

And I'm amenable to that.

Would be feasible.

What I would do is I would pull those images together with top 30, whatever the number is.

Okay.

We can do a side by side original image as is and then suggested crop recolor whatever fits so that you can see those with the suggestions. You can have a discussion on whether that works or not. So that all of that can happen at that meeting. Can forget potentials, vote on which ones you like, and then you can even have a separate vote if you like the crop or not or something to that effect.

And if you could provide documentation there in public domain.

Yes. Yes, I'll do that as

Yeah, would need to make sure that Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Go ahead.

As long as we're on the scheduling topic, not that we need to have it solidified now, but the April 1 meeting is the week of spring break. I know for some committees that can present a quorum issue. Is anyone aware at this moment if they're unable to attend that meeting? No. No? Okay. That's a good thing, right? But I'm seeing it in my calendar. I just wanted to make mention of it. I will also be here, but just had in there as a potential conflict.

Okay. Perfect. Well, then I think that we can probably go ahead with wrapping up this section of our of our meeting. Do we have oh, sorry.

Do we have a motion?

Yes. About to say that. Thank you, Alex. I processed at a different speed. So if I could get a recommendation or a motion move forward, that would be great.

So I would like to motion for option two. Is that all I have to say there?

Yeah. So I will recommend approval for option two dependent on the following conditions. So that the Creative Downtown Appleton Incorporated will provide multiple images, right, to the public arts committee prior, like we had mentioned, to make a final selection then for, like, our April meeting. I can reword this if I need to. And that Creative Downtown Appleton would cover all necessary costs for this project, And then, Creative Johnson Appleton would also then gift the panels to the Public Arts Committee for future use.

You entertain amending your motion I to incorporate like to

amend my motion to include the following, that Appleton Creative Inc. Is going to gift the panels.

Cover the cost.

Cover the cost. My goodness, I'm sorry.

That's okay.

And have selection of 30 images ready by

March 28. March 28. Yeah. Twentieth.

Twentieth, sorry. Twentieth, yeah.

And then is that it?

Yeah, I think that's good. Can we get a second?

Oh, did

you want to say something?

Do we need to add more?

Do we need to

add more to it? The only suggestion is you could add and that the funds for a new contest be retained.

Okay. Because, yeah, I did and then I do want to add a sec propose a second motion after this. So I don't know if that needs to be or do we need to retain? I think there's one action item.

Oh, Brenda?

Oh, okay. Yeah. We had just talked okay. So I yeah. I wanted to I mean, I guess, to to retain funds for the so to have a contest afterwards. Apologies. We had talked about how to verbiage this earlier, and if if if this came up and I had written down to propose a second component of this for maintaining funds.

Yeah, yeah. So as part of my motion, I'd like us to maintain the funds for a contest for next year. I apologize. The wording is still it escapes me still.

We're artists. We're not Alright. So then if we can have is that good for the word then? Okay. So we would be able to maintain for next year. And then if we can get a second for that?

I will second.

All in favor? I'm in favor.

Aye. Okay.

Thank you. Sorry, that was a long Thank

you for bearing with us.

Yeah. We appreciate your time, Tom and Alex. Thank you. So we do have another action item then on our agenda for today to request to approve proposal from Appleton Downtown Incorporated to replace the existing College Avenue banners. So I don't know if staff wants to say anything more about that. Thank you. Have a good day.

I can say just a few words here, give a high level overview. Also want to recognize the two staff members from Appleton Downtown Inc, which is the applicant, are here. If there are questions for them, think I they'd be happy to discuss further. But the proposal before the committee today is to essentially replace the existing banners that are located along College Avenue. Got an image on the screen here of what the existing banners look like.

I believe there are 36 banners along College Avenue, far west end being as far west as Badger Avenue, and then all the way down to Drew Street. Usually one per block, I believe, is the standard spacing. The proposal before the committee is to utilize the existing brackets and then simply replace the content, sticking with the one great place motto, but updating the the imagery. So there are four different images that are proposed by the by the applicant, by Appleton Downtown Inc. And aesthetics and content are, for further discussion among committee.

The actual operational details of when and how the install occurs would be the business of the Municipal Services Committee. But content and aesthetics is very much under the purview of Arts Committee.

Alright. So we do have representatives from ADI here. Okay.

Can you come up and tell us Yeah. How how the the graphics were selected, the words, just how these came to be and oh, there we

go. Hi. My name is Abby. I'm the marketing director with Appleton Downtown Incorporated. We worked with our graphic design company, Williams Marketing, who's here in Downtown Appleton as well, to create these new banners. They have not been updated since 2015, so it has been quite a long time since the design has been updated. ADI has maintained them as they have had wear and tear and things like that, the current design. So I proposed that we update the designs. As part of our, what we call, image marketing campaign that we launched in 2024, We use the word come, and then we change along with the subhead of shop, discover, thrive, savor. There's a lot of different ones on top of these as well.

So we proposed the idea of including that message that we have used along with our paid campaign to be the banners. It goes along with our One Great Place branding that we have had, the colors, the fonts, all those different things, using some very bright and vibrant imagery and colors to represent downtown Appleton and kind of those broader themes that we have throughout downtown.

Okay. So I just wanna state that well, thank you for the designs and everything. I do have a question about actually, so in the in the past with the banners, have we had any issues with, like, fading? Because I'm I am just wondering, like, with the white text on top of the color, like, how that might hold up and okay.

For sure.

I really broke this, didn't I? To my knowledge, we do have built into our budget every year to replace, I believe it's four of them every year for any issues of fading or tearing or things like that. I have not heard of there being any excessive issues with it as they currently stand. I don't know if the city has comment on that has been an issue currently, but I don't believe so. We plan to work with Fox City Sign, who has done these, the current ones as well, and to do the same material.

Okay. So for this proposal, the role of our committee today is to base, you know, any recommendation. Like it says in the packet, we make on plans for banner installation. So any recommendation will be based off of, like, the plans for banner installation and maintenance along with the banner's color scheme and theme. So I don't know if anyone else has any questions at all for the representative while they're up here.

Otherwise, we can let her sit down and have a little discussion. Okay. Thank you. So personally, I did look this over, and I do think that the plans to have city staff install the banners in previous locations and to repair or replace as needed, that all seems feasible. I do see that, like, the geometric background design of these banners, it mimics some of the murals in our community, especially I think some of that is just right outside of sit the city city hall, which does add, I think, some aesthetic cohesion.

However, I am curious about, the choice of symbols, font, and text, and I think I'm a little concerned, about the potential for some of these symbols to also maybe be misconstrued. I I know that we had, with some of the sim similar imagery and wording, some issues when we were doing, like, the selfie sculpture, and I just wanna be really mindful of how, you know, the aesthetics of these, especially if they're gonna be up for a really long time, it'd be something that's pretty prominent, how they're received by our community. Do any of the other members have any feedback on that at all? I don't know if you've had a chance to look through these and what your opinion is.

Could you maybe elaborate on how you think they might be misconstrued?

Misconstrued. Yeah. I do have some so image number three, there's some confusion with some of that imagery to me and I guess I yes.

If you

could yeah. You can speak on that.

Yeah. So for this one, a big part of our mission is the overall business recruitment, partnering with the Business Improvement District. So this idea is kind of the business side of things, so come Thrive in terms of bringing your business down here, working down here. So that was kind of that. So obviously the handshake, a very popular business symbol, and then also the idea of thriving, growing, that was the graph underneath it with the arrow going up symbolizing growth.

So that was kind of the purpose behind that. I do believe there was an image of the current banners. I'm not sure, like somebody said, what we're worried about being misconstrued, but the pin itself has been an image that is already on there. You know, the idea of using that wording of create, discover is already on there, one great place, and then obviously the symbols versus a physical image. So it's a very similar concept of what was done currently, and then also I did have some examples of what was done before these were even created when we had our Downtown Cool brand.

It was a very similar concept with symbols and then also wording. So it's a very similar evolution of the past designs for the current one, just kind of going along with design trends, but also with our branding, so that's where the font came from, the wording, the colors. The geometric shape, the fractal, as we call it, is what is in our ADI One Great Place pin logo that we use for our materials is our organization's logo, so that's where that coloring comes from. It's being pulled from that pin, and then it was just selected as a specific yellow or green. So those are colors were being selected from our brand logo. So I just wanted to clarify that as well.

Okay. And both of the fonts that are depicted on these new banners, those are your current font use?

Yes. Are our current brand fonts, yes.

I guess I'll say that I do image number three is my least favorite. I don't find it problematic. I just don't like it as much. Image number four is my favorite. But I don't think that any of them are bad or would be a problem from my perspective, at least.

Yeah. I can understand. It's not the most, like, creative example of what things are. And it may be maybe the side of things that maybe we don't necessarily resonate with. But I think there are groups down here, businesses down here, people who would resonate with the concept. But I can understand that it maybe isn't the most aesthetically pleasing compared to the others.

Yeah. I'm not talking necessarily about aesthetics. I'm more talking about, like, the symbolism and how it kinda has leg offshoots and just has a little bit of a phallic semblance to me. And I just wonder if, looking at it, it could potentially be misconstrued. I just think very broadly in how a lot of different people are coming to this to see and how I personally also do some research on symbols and how they can be viewed by different populations. And so that one is the only one that I think, you know, I like the handshake. I think that's great. But I think that there could be a little bit of maybe some different design. And I am wondering, too, like, just with that, yeah, I personally would like to see some design alternatives, but that is You

know, maybe if we just remove the arrow and just had a bar graph growing, then

that absolutely. Would be

Yep, or we could remove that part altogether and it could just be the handshake. That's very simple as well, but yeah.

Because I also didn't realize that meant, like, business growth.

So the come discover, can you talk about that one? Yeah. I mean, it's pretty literal, but it's pretty literal. Like, there's lots of other things to discover. Yes.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. As we were looking at that, that was more targeted towards thinking about the events that Appleton Downtown hosts and also other organizations host down here. Obviously, live music is very important to the community and then also just the idea of, you know, ticketed events in general. That's kind of where that came from. We have a variety. The Performing Arts Center, you know, kind of that literal sense of it. So we didn't want to do anything that was too specific or, you know, super detailed because obviously these will be very high up. They're on a small scale.

So we wanted to do images that were very universally and easily recognized by somebody who was looking at them in terms of, you know, when they're resonating with it. So that's kind of where that came up of, obviously, people will resonate with the idea of music, a ticket to an event, and that those are things you could discover here downtown.

Would you be open to designing six as opposed to four. You know, I think we're missing, like, family and, you know, some of the farmers markets. And, you know, some of those sorts of things is what I would resonate more with. So I'm just opening that up for a possibility.

Sure. Yeah. It's definitely something we can consider. We were just thinking having four designs in terms of kind of the spacing of how things worked out. That's what we just thought would be easiest in terms of, you know, how they would be laid out and when you would see them moving up and down. So we would just have less of each one with that. But

Is that how many designs of there are of each now is for?

I had them printed out too, and then I had our old ones as well in case you guys needed to see them.

Yeah, I just think that, you know, a lot of

the there are currently four.

You know, a lot of the activities and a lot of what we're trying to do is bring families downtown and I don't see like, kids represented. Sure. You know, I think of the pack, and yes, the pack has, you know, performances for kids, but the building for kids is downtown and, you know, all of the, you know, all the other things. So I guess that would be my comment is to be a little bit more inclusive to all age groups in Maybe terms of

you could do like a come play and then have like And something with I do really like the farmers market idea as well. I love the Appleton Farmers Markets and the other downtown markets that we have.

Yeah. Maybe like Come Grow

or something. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. We we did actually have some. We used Come Play quite often, and then we also did have a Come Together option, but we felt like it was very similar to the Come Discover. So we paired it down, but we actually did have another one that did say Come Together. I don't remember exactly what the imagery was, but it was something that we actually did discuss, and it is something we use in some of our additional marketing. So we just did the four options since we have four currently, and we didn't want to have too many and we figured we would just kind of go with that similar route.

I know that you ultimately have to make, like, the decisions of these themes, do you ever take in I know I had mentioned this when we were doing the selfie portrait. If there's ever, like, opportunities that you take to do community polls just to get like to maybe engage their input. Yeah, just because, you know, just considering like if, you know, how it might be received again.

Sure. Yeah. I know that that was a controversial topic that we did run into. That is the first time with our brand we have ever had any sort of controversy. We have had this brand since 2015, and we've used a lot of these similar words, themes, things like that on a lot of our marketing materials. It's very similar to what we have currently, So we haven't necessarily felt the need to pose it to the community since it is kind of just not only the brand of downtown, but our organization as well. But yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Well, thank you. Alright. Does anyone else have any other feedback or questions before we move on? So overall, personally, I'm not confident in the public receptivity of these banners and the elements that are maybe a little bit incongruent with what I see, I guess, that our policy potentially might deem as appropriate art.

And in my opinion, I would hope to see a resubmittal of the College Avenue banners designs. I don't know how the committee feels about that or if that's something that we you know, how we want to go ahead and motion. But I would like to motion for that. But I can go ahead and do that in a minute. Don't know if anyone has any preferences.

I do like the idea of getting a few more, if nothing else. So I do agree with you there.

Maybe include something about the outdoors. There's so many outdoor activities downtown. Downtown. Get outside, come outside.

Could we even get maybe, like, 10 of these and then vote down or something like that or

I don't know if that's in our purview.

Okay.

Kara, do you want to mention anything on that? I apologize. We're kind of going long here.

What I would suggest is, based on what I'm hearing you say, is you'd have a motion to hold action and request with parameters a resubmittal. I would caution on asking for 10.

Okay.

If there's specific feedback with regards to what's been presented that you'd want modified or maybe a fifth or sixth added with suggestions for themes, I think that's fair. But in respect for the applicant who's probably paying somebody to design, I would encourage you to just be cognizant of expenses they might incur. So be focused. Okay.

I think maybe what I'm seeing, too, is just that we want more variety because they're a bit more stark than the previous banners. I think there's, like, fewer colors per banner. Maybe I don't know. That's just an observation, but maybe that's, like, where the issue is coming from. But I like the idea of making new banners. I think that's great.

So what are all the hot topics we want to motion?

I think that we just have to come up with a couple of parameters quick and then we can So go I think the parameter, for me at least, I think that just to kind of look back at the symbolism that we're using.

The proposed timeline of having these be put up in May along with when the city puts up the flags for Memorial Day and things like that. I just want to be cognizant of that timeline as well so that way, in terms of expenses in the city's operations and things like that, we had pre discussed having those put up kind of at the same time. I don't know if we were to delay this or things like that and then whatever committees come after this, if that timeline is still going to be feasible or not. So I just wanted to ask about that.

Staff, do you have any comment on that?

We would have to talk to it would depend how quickly you can produce Alright. And then when in May operations would be out there doing it. Mhmm.

Do know how long it takes to make the banners? Like, to

produce them? Say, production wise, probably five to ten business days once they're submitted to the printer. I could have our graphic designer jump on it right away in terms of thinking of whatever you guys suggest or whatever changes we need to make.

One thing I would just if you're okay with me just adding a thought. I think something to keep in mind for future submittals from any external entity, build plenty of time, like, ahead of when you wanna do something Mhmm. To allow the committee to work. Because they have a role here. It's to curate art for the city. And sometimes things that are submitted aren't necessarily their vision, so we need a little bit of cushion in submittal schedules to allow for that back and forth. Otherwise, it puts them in a difficult bind.

If if I may just, add, obviously, we're anticipating an April 1 arts committee meeting based on the previously discussed item. If it would be possible for the applicant to make modifications to banner number three was what was discussed in detail and then perhaps come with, one or two additional banners, have that submitted around that same time frame we discussed previously, right, like around March 20 being the the deadline. That would allow us to put that also on the April 1 meeting. This one would, after Arts Committee, proceed to Municipal Services Committee because they're overseeing the kind of operational and installation details. They would meet sometime in early to mid April, would then proceed to council.

So I think if we are able to receive the modified banner number three and two additional banners by mid March or so, it would allow us to have the committee work both here at Arts Committee and at Municipal Service Committee occur in April. And assuming that all goes according to plan, then would allow for the installation to occur concurrently with the flags going up sometime in May.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I meant no disrespect by that at all. I just was curious timeline wise about everything and disrespecting all the committees and things we have to go through. Usually it's Jennifer who's up here, so I

appreciate the help. Doing excellent job. Thank you.

You're doing an excellent job, and we appreciate all the time and everything that you're putting into this.

Thank you. You guys as well.

You. Alright. So I guess from what you said then, I would motion to hold action with parameters for submittal to have banner number three modified and then bring for EDI to bring one to two additional options to be reviewed at the April 1 meeting.

Does that sound good?

Do we need to provide parameters in terms of content of the one to two banners, or are we gonna leave that up to them? I just really wanna see something with family that that indicates more family.

So

Yeah. I think having yeah. Do we wanna add those parameters? We can. I would say, yeah, we can maybe have some parameters that have a little bit more community oriented themes, so family and potentially other downtown events that brought in the music and ticket symbolism.

Yep. Okay. So that is what I motion. Can I get? I will second. And all in favor

of that?

Aye. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate all of your time. So then it looks like I can motion to adjourn. Hopefully, correct?

Real quick, I did just want to say I really like Alex's idea he brought up earlier of potentially moving towards digital formats for the tower. Maybe it's because I come from a digital art background, but there's so many cool things you can do with those LED panels. You can put up cameras and have feedback where when people walk in front of them, they see themselves in it. There's endless options. And I don't know when it'll be appropriate to talk about that, but I think that would be a very good idea.

I believe that's something that we can add to a future meeting on our agenda. So we would just have to plan for that. Okay. Good to know we have someone who is knowledgeable about that on our committee. So, All right, thank you. Well, I think then I would love to motion to adjourn our meeting for today.

I will second.

All right, we're all good then. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.