City Council considers new gateway signage on interstate

With some concern as to the date the city was actually founded, officials are considering adding new entrance signage to welcome visitors.

Charlotte Wattigny, creative & marketing manager for the city of San Marcos Destination Services presented different designs for gateway signs that will be located south of Posey Road and north of Yarrington Road.

At the regular Tuesday meeting of the San Marcos City Council at City Hall, Wattigny said they wanted to stay consistent with current San Marcos branding, both in the message and visuals for any new signage.

She said this could be accomplished by using limestone to convey the area trails and hill country location, as well as a blue and green color scheme to represent the river and natural areas to match existing signs and images that also represent the natural qualities of the city.

The visual references for base designs for the sign include the limestone- edged river banks, the hill country vistas and the flowing river and wild rice, an endangered species here.

Possible design elements that were discussed during the meeting could incorporate floating and backlit letters, layers of water that might be lighted between panels and cutout elements.

In regard to other gateway sign designs, City Council Mayor Pro Tem Mark Gleason said, “The simpler the better. The simple ones stand out.”

Wattigny presented what she termed as two classic versions that were variations of a simple design with limestone at the bottom and images of green hills in the background and a flowing river to the right with the date that San Marcos was established. As to that date, there was some confusion expressed by council members.

“I thought 1851 is when we were established as a city,” Mayor Jane Hughson said.

“If you look on our seal, it says 1877,” Wattigny said.

Rebecca Ybarra, San Marcos Destination Services, said, “if you look at the state’s website, for history it goes back to 1755.”

City Council member Jude Prather said jokingly that the sign could read “established a long time ago.”

Due to the fact that there are many conflicting dates associated with the establishment of San Marcos, the council decided to leave the date out altogether.

Wattigny also showed two versions that had green backgrounds, a limestone bottom and a blue river to the right of the design but with imagery placed in front of the background. One design had a heron, a native San Marcos bird and the other a tree. “I recently saw one of these birds on a glass bottom boat tour and it was so majestic,” City Council Member Alyssa Garza said, referencing the heron design. “For people that are from San Marcos that I showed some of these [images] to, they don’t identify the bird with San Marcos,” City Manager Stephanie Reyes said.

The tree design would use “a general image of a tree instead of a specific type, that way it gives you the overall peaceful feeling of nature without getting hung up on a particular species,” Wattigny said.

After some back and forth on the different designs and a vote by the council, Wattigny said, “I can do a variation of B and C,” referring to one of the classic designs and the heron design with an addition of the council's preference for a more natural edge to the limestone and the river flowing all of the way to the bottom of the sign.