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Tampa Palms To Spruce Up Entry Signs

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By KENNETH KNIGHT

kknight@tampatrib.com

Published: March 11, 2009

TAMPA PALMS - The community entryway makeover project has finally reached the two large monuments guarding the entrances to Tampa Palms and Bruce B. Downs boulevards.

Workers have removed much of the original brick facades fronting Bruce B. Downs Boulevard to make way for a more stately arched design created by the landscape architecture firm Hardeman-Kempton & Associates.

The remodeled monuments will have a cap of molded brick above the face of the sign, which will be black granite etched with gold lettering.

The Tampa Palms Community Development District board of supervisors, the taxing authority that approved funding for the sign rehabilitation project, initially expressed concerns about the slight difference between the colors of the new and existing bricks as well as the black granite slabs. However, they decided the color differences in both cases were acceptable.

The district is in the midst of replacing four dozen monument signs at the entry to residential villages in Tampa Palms 1 and 2 at a cost of slightly more than $1 million. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

The monument refurbishing project is part of Tampa Palms Visioning 2011, a joint project of the district and the Tampa Palms Owners Association, to give the 23-year-old master-planned community a fresh, cohesive look.

Installing etched lettering should also reduce sign vandalism and theft, which had been a problem prior to the makeover project.

Construction workers have begun preliminary work to replace the iconic blue tile signs at the Palm Lake and Somerset office parks on Amberly Drive.

Reporter Kenneth Knight can be reached at (813) 865-4842.

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