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Tampa Palms Leaders Choose Sign Design

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By GEORGE WILKENS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 14, 2007

TAMPA PALMS - A monument sign design incorporating molded brick and modern lighting is favored by Tampa Palms Community Development District supervisors, who are working toward launching the construction project in early March.

The design the five supervisors endorsed at their Dec. 12 meeting calls for molded brick at the base and top of the community's main Bruce B. Downs Boulevard entrance signs, at Amberly Drive and Tampa Palms Boulevard.

The sign faces, as previously decided, will be black granite. Supervisors have yet to decide whether the signs will have raised gold letters, similar to the existing design, or have theft-proof engraved letters.

The three designs from which supervisors made their selection offered subtle differences, said Ted Kempton of Hardeman-Kempton & Associates, the Tampa landscape architectural firm handling the multiyear project, Tampa Palms Visioning 2011.

The selected design, with an arched cap of molded brick above the sign face, provides finer detail than the others and can accommodate recessed lights around the perimeter of the sign face, Kempton said.

Supervisors got an illuminating demonstration of modern 12-volt, energy-saving, light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

"LED is the wave of the future," Kempton said. "It is the lighting of the future."

If supervisors opt for raised letters, LEDs also can be a secondary lighting source. "It goes behind the letters, shining on the granite. It gives a halo effect," he told supervisors.

Kempton said a mockup of an LED-illuminated sign will be demonstrated at supervisors' meeting 6:30 p.m. Jan. 9.

Cost-conscious supervisors questioned the expense of both the lighting and the molded brick signs.

"It appears to me this can become a very expensive project," said Supervisor Bill Shimer, especially since the project also calls for new monument signs at the entrances to many of the villages in Tampa Palms Areas 1 and 2.

Kempton did not have exact figures but said the price difference between standard brick and specialty brick is not extreme.

"It's not going to break the bank if you go with the additional molded brick," he said. Lighting estimates also are yet to come.

Reporter George Wilkens can be reached at (813) 865-4847 or gwilkens@tampatrib.com.

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