New TORONTO sign built to last, shine bright -- and repel invading critters

Thestar.com
Sept. 15, 2020
David Rider

The new TORONTO sign will look much like the old one, says the man who designed both, but sturdier, brighter and, importantly, rodent-proof.

You can’t blame Don Loughlin of Toronto firm Unit 11 for not wanting to mess much with a design that was supposed to last three weeks but, five years later, remains a surprise tourism smash hit viewed around the world.

“We’ve done a replica look of what was there, we’ve just done it way better,” and made to last decades, said Loughlin, founder and president of the design-fabrication company that has a studio on Keele Street and another in Vancouver.

The seven letters will still be “Azo Sans Bold” font, stand a commanding four metres including the base, and will be internally lit, with Os begging to be climbed in.

But the surface will gleam more than its oft-scuffed forebear, the lights will be brighter and more versatile, the base will be solid concrete and the letter frames are abuse-proof welded and bolted quarter-inch aluminum.

Loughlin and his crew were as surprised as anyone that the first sign, dreamed up by city marketers based on a sign in Amsterdam, immediately became massively popular with Torontonians and phone-wielding tourists.

“Honestly, designing and building it was just another job we were doing,” and a small one compared to constructing camera-worthy desks for an army of broadcasters arriving from around the world, he says.

“The TORONTO sign, even though it’s physically big, in our world it was kind of a cool job but it wasn’t the main thing we were doing for the Pan Am Games. We never dreamed it would be as popular as it became.”

City hall heeded public opinion and left the $100,000 sign in place after the Games. But visible scuffs meant regular maintenance visits by Unit 11, including lighting repairs blamed by some, incorrectly, on water leaking into letters.

“It was actually a lot of rodents getting into it and chewing on cables. That was the real problem,” Loughlin says. “We like to say it was squirrels but it could be rats, mice, whatever.” Cables were covered, a consideration built into the new design.

Newlyweds pose in the Os. Fans at the Toronto Raptors 2019 championship celebration walked atop them. Mayor John Tory jokes, brows raised, that looking out his office window he sees people doing all sorts of things in the sign.

Mostly, the letters are photographed and shared. “The TORONTO sign quickly became a symbol of civic pride at a time when Toronto was just discovering its swagger,” says Andrew Weir of tourism promoter Destination Toronto.

“Its importance for visitors grew out of the way residents embraced it. That dynamic is more important now than ever, as it’s vital that residents re-engage with their city to set the foundation for the return of visitors.”

When city council finally agreed to fund a permanent replacement from city reserve funds, Unit 11 worked hard to beat more than a dozen rivals for the contract worth $760,000 including fabrication, installation, vinyl “wraps” and maintenance.

Loughlin is confident the magic will remain when the new sign is unveiled this week. But there’s no guarantee. The federal government got Unit 11 to build similar signs for Canada 150 celebrations. Those letters did not get big social media traction, possibly because they were half as tall as Toronto’s.

TORONTO, with the curved city hall towers behind, reflecting pond in front, has looked great, Loughlin says, since he snapped the first photo of it, with only the first O illuminated, during installation back in 2015.

“There’s just something about it that works and I intend this sign to last a very long time -- I don’t want to be an old man getting a call that the sign’s not in good shape,” Loughlin jokes.

“It’s guaranteed for 20 years but I think it’s good for 50-years plus. It’ll be there for a long, long time.”