County installing new signs to identify parks

Most Columbia County parks will soon be marked with updated and easily identifiable signs.

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Six county parks will be getting the new signs with the same design theme as the sign installed at Reed Creek Park about eight months ago, said Barry Smith, the director of the county's Community and Leisure Services Division.

"We saw it looked real good, so we decided to go county-wide with all the signs," he said, adding that the sandblasted sign was installed on a stucco background with a stacked stone base.

"The whole purpose of this park signage is to give continuity throughout all the county parks for recognition that it is a county facility," he said.

The sign at Reed Creek Park was the first step of a three-phase effort to replace old or install new signs at most of the county's parks. Smith said the three signs involved in the second phase are being installed at the front and back entrances of Patriots Park on Columbia Road, at Riverside Park on Hardy McManus Road and at Blanchard Woods Park on Blanchard Road.

The entire project, including three phases and seven signs, costs $64,000 and is funded by 2006-2010 sales tax funds.

"It is a little expensive, but worth the change," Smith said. "But I think it'll give the image that it is a county park facility and give continuity throughout the county."

Smith said the three third-phase signs recently were ordered from an Atlanta design company and are expected to be ready for installation by mid-May.

Those signs include new entrance markers for Blanchard Park off South Belair Road, Lonnie Morris Park on Appling-Harlem Highway in Appling and the Eubank Blanchard Community Center on Cobbham Road in Winfield.

"Some of the parks didn't have signs, didn't really have signs out by the roadway," Smith said. "These signs will be out by the main traffic corridor in front of the park where you can identify the park."

Thoughts about the project began in 2004 when the county adopted a new logo. The flowing lines of the water in the logo dictated the flowing asymmetrical design of the signs, he said.

The newly designed signs will also be installed eventually into a stone wall at the Savannah Rapids Park and at the Evans Town Center Park when it is developed.