Funding woes could dim Toronto sign’s glow

"The light bulbs are going to burn out, or it’s going to fall, or somebody’s going to cut their finger,” says one bureaucrat.

Thestar.com
June 20, 2016
By David Rider

The TORONTO sign makes a big bright colourful lie out of the trope that city hall can’t do anything right.

“It instantly became one of our most recognizable, important icons - there’s a reason people take their picture beside it,” Andrew Weir, chief marketing officer of Tourism Toronto, says of the Nathan Phillips Square sign.

“The lifeblood of destination marketing is visual icons . . . The absolute brashness of our sign is something that Toronto truly needed - there was a pent-up demand to be proud of our city.”

So why, as it approaches its first birthday, can’t the tourist and social-media magnet outside city hall get much respect from politicians working inside the building?

The Pan Am Games spirit booster, kept in Nathan Phillips Square by popular demand, has no official permanent status, no guidelines for which events merit notice by its multihued lights, and no ongoing maintenance funding.

Last month, city council kicked back to staff a request to tap $150,000 from a reserve fund to pay for upkeep in 2016, to upgrade lighting to synchronize it with other lights in the square, and to prepare a report about whether council should consider building a smaller “T.O.” sign that could be moved around the city.

“By far, my whole life in marketing, this is the most successful marketing media branding project that I’ve ever been involved with,” Mike Williams, general manager of economic development, told council while giving full credit to colleagues Marilyn Nickel and Sue Holland, who designed the sign and oversaw its creation.

More than 122 million global “social media impressions” - views and online shares - since last July, however, can’t change the fact that the $100,000. climbable sign was built to be temporary. It will need to be replaced in as few as three years, said Williams, strongly urging council to put wheels in motion for a permanent sign plan.

“The lights are going to fade, the leakage ... it’ll start to look lousy and it’ll start to work poorly,” if left alone, Williams said. “It already is working poorly on some of the lighting.”

A city report pegged possible future costs of $421,700 over two years, including $200,000 for a mobile sign.

Councillor Michael Thompson, the economic development chair, heaped praise on the sign. But, after several colleagues mocked the idea of paying staff costs to take care of it - Giorgio Mammoliti volunteered to do the job himself - Thompson asked Williams if he could come back with more options by end of summer.

“Sure,” replied a resigned-sounding Williams, adding he’ll move budgets around to pay for maintenance.

Earlier, at committee, Councillor Raymond Cho made an unsuccessful bid to “privatize” the sign.

At council, Etobicoke colleague Stephen Holyday went one better. “Essentially, I’d like to sell the sign,” he said.

“I’m not convinced its lustre will last that long ... The light bulbs are going to burn out, or it’s going to fall, or somebody’s going to cut their finger on it and then we’ve got a negative publicity piece with the city of Toronto ... I would hope somebody would buy it.”

Councillor David Shiner scoffed, calling the sign a potent symbol of Toronto pride and unity after a forced 1998 amalgamation that left various parts of the city feeling anything but unified.

“Why would I want to get rid of that? It’s actually drawing people together from right across this greater city and right into 905,” he said. Shiner questioned, however, the city paying any extra staff costs for maintaining the sign, and was on the winning side in a 29-5 vote to have staff come back with other options.

Weir says it’s hard to put a value on 10-foot illuminated letters bringing crowds and vitality to Toronto’s central square.

“What is the value to Toronto having the CN Tower? Any destination is important and, when one of them happens to be the name of your city literally spelled out - there’s a lot of value to it.”