ATHOL — Urban designer Mark Faverman met with the Downtown Development Committee on Tuesday, March 8, to set in motion the effort to update and improve Athol’s wayfinding capabilities and town “brand.”
Faverman Design is the consultant hired for the town by the state under the Department of Housing and Community Development’s Mass. Downtown Initiative. The MDI awarded Athol a $25,000 competitive grant to cover the cost of Faverman’s services. The grant proposal was penned by Athol Community Development Director Eric Smith. Only four other communities received funding for wayfinding projects during the most recent round of grants.
Locally, Faverman has also been working on a wayfinding strategy for the town of Winchendon.
Faverman provided a PowerPoint presentation illustrating how, working with Faverman Design, a number of other communities approached similar efforts.
“We’ve talked a little bit about community branding,” he said, “and how it uniquely underscores a community’s sense of place and sense of arrival, and how it underscores character and civic identity through an appealing presentation of who you are and what you are as a town or city. It isn’t just a recognizable name or logo; it’s a characterization of what the town is. And this is what we’re going to strive for.
“Community branding turns a place into a community that is very, very nice — and a destination. Branding can be a major tool of community, and wayfinding is another tool as well.”
Faverman showed the committee examples of wayfinding efforts undertaken in communities as diverse as affluent Brookline and Wellesley, and those attempting economic revival, such as Southbridge.
“What is wayfinding?” Feverman asked. “Wayfinding is a way to guide pedestrians and vehicles through a systemized and visual path, basically. Wayfinding has a hierarchy to it. There are landmarks. There are identity signs and elements. There are directional signs which orient and point. There are informational signs, which can be historical markers of community information pieces, or kiosks. And there are regulatory, such as ‘no parking.’ We have a lot of regulatory signs — probably too many — in most places.”
Faverman used Ipswich, the first town his company worked with, as an example of a community striving to take advantage of a single popular attraction to boost its overall economy.
“Ipswich,” he said, “is known for Crane Beach, which has 750,000 visitors during an average summer, or more. But what happens is, people go to the beach and then they turn around and go home. The town of Ipswich wanted to do something about that.
Faverman noted that Ipswich has the largest number of first-period homes built between 1630 and 1725 in the United States — 59. It also boasts a two-arch stone bridge, the Choate Bridge, built in 1760.
He went on to explain that an image of the bridge was chosen as an icon to represent the community, which was accompanied by the tag line “Bridging History.” Over a period of three years, he said, the town implemented its wayfinding strategies with signs incorporating the image of the bridge and tag line. The uniformity of the signs allows visitors to quickly identify opportunities for parking, along with directing them to local historical sites, recreational opportunities and to retail and entertainment districts.
Icons adopted by other communities ranged from lobster trap buoys to beech tree leaves, and from dinghies to architectural elements found on historic buildings. Slogans, or tag lines, also varied greatly from community to community and, in some cases, none was adopted.
Faverman said he wants to provide Athol with a wayfinding system that is flexible.
“We could give you a really expensive system,” he said, “but we’re not. We’re giving you sort of a basic system that you can build on.”
Once new signs are erected, he said in response to a question, the spots where they are located need a level of maintenance.
“Oftentimes,” said Faverman, “the individuals in charge of fostering the fabrication and implementation of the program are the purchasing agents of the town. Then that’s handed over to the DPW. If it’s a DPW that has interesting qualities to it, it will do the landscaping or look at that issue.
“We also have community people who are very involved at various times, and that’s part of the process as well.”
Faverman asked committee members to show up at next month’s meeting with pictures of anything they believe could be used to develop an icon or establish an identity for Athol which can then be incorporated into the signage produced for a wayfinding system.
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com