New street signs are coming to Riverside.
At the village board’s May 2 meeting, trustees approved a design for the signs, which will replace the village’s current ones. The new signs, which will be installed this and next summer, will commemorate Riverside’s 150th anniversary in 2025.
The village will sell the old signs to Riversiders past and present to raise funds for events and celebrations next year leading up to the sesquicentennial in August.
The new signs will feature black text on a white background with Riverside’s name at the top in capital letters. A tree branch with green leaves based on the branch in Riverside’s official logo can be found in the top corners above the street name.
“We chose black print on white because it’s easiest to read, for not just our residents but also our visitors,” said Trustee Alex Gallegos, who is one of two co-chairs of the ad-hoc sesquicentennial planning committee responsible for anniversary festivities. “Since we’re now becoming more of a wayfinding type of community, we want it to be easier for anyone to come visit us.”
Public Works Director Dan Tabb said the new signs will be nine inches tall with six-inch-tall text, making them about 50% larger than the village’s current street signs. The signs will vary in length based on the street name each sign bears.
“The committee was very deliberate in opting to go for a standard street sign size,” said Trustee Aberdeen Marsh-Ozga, the sesquicentennial committee’s other co-chair. “I think with bringing in the different design elements from our logo and branding materials, we were able to accomplish a lot in a very little space.”
Village Clerk Ethan Sowl estimated each of the village’s 300 street signs would sell for $300, raising a maximum of $90,000; however, the replacement of the signs will cost the village an estimated $50,850, including the price of the signs and the cost for village staff to install them, meaning the project will generate $39,150 in profit to go toward anniversary events and other expenditures.
The committee’s budget for 2024 is only $1,000, but Sowl said it “will definitely need to spend more than $1,000 this year” before it raises profit from the street sign sale. Trustees approved having Riverside’s general fund special events budget subsidize up to $90,000 of purchases outside of the committee’s budget so it can book vendors for events, buy the village’s new street signs and more.
“While it is the goal for [the] Riverside 150 street sign project and other fundraising opportunities to reimburse the bulk of these expenditures, it’ll just depend on the success of selling those projects and also getting other fundraising opportunities,” he said.
Sowl presented trustees with four different options on what to do with the village’s street sign posts, which are green and match the rest of Riverside’s signage posts outside of some black posts on East Burlington Street. Painting them black would have run the village nearly $9,000 extra, leaving $30,750 in maximum profit. The other two options — which both involved removing the current posts and replacing them with new black posts — would have each cost the village more than the estimated $90,000 recouped from selling the old street signs, losing Riverside money overall.
“Trustees, I would note this is purely an aesthetic choice here. The current signposts are sufficient [and] satisfactory,” Village President Douglas Pollock said. “They’re your standard, you know, construction posts, so they’re not attractive or decorative, but they’re also not very obtrusive, either.”
Trustees agreed to leave the street sign posts as they are, allowing the village to reap the maximum reward from the sale of the old signs.
Those old street signs will be sold to current and former village residents, with a chance that signs from more popular streets, like Riverside Road, will be up for bid rather than sold at a set price, Sowl said.
“This is open to anybody, so anyone who lives here and wants some nostalgia from the street that they grew up on; it’s going to be publicized all over the place,” Gallegos said. “Not just our current residents, but anyone who has any type of history with Riverside would be, of course, more than welcome to bid in on those signs.”
What else is happening with Riverside’s sesquicentennial?
Trustees’ direction to village staff on the new street signs came alongside other updates from the sesquicentennial committee on their plans for the celebration of Riverside’s 150th anniversary.
According to a village memo, the committee “has begun workshopping plans” alongside the parks and recreation department for a Riverside homecoming weekend August 7-10, 2025, in honor of the village’s official date of incorporation on August 8, 1875. Current and former Riversiders will be invited home for a weekend of activities, which could include the third and final show in the village’s annual concert series, a homecoming party at the Riverside train station and a golf outing or brunch at the Riverside Golf Club.
The committee is also collaborating with Riverside’s historical commission to include village anniversary events and programming on the commission’s annual print calendar, the theme of which will be “Riverside by the Decades.” According to the village memo, the calendar will feature events from the village and its parks and recreation department as well as those from school districts and local nonprofits.
The committee is accepting applications until July 1 from Riverside organizations to include their events on the calendar, which will be available for purchase at the 2024 Holiday Stroll; the application form can be obtained and submitted on the committee’s page on Riverside’s website.
Next, committee members have chosen an official logo for use in sesquicentennial branding materials. The logo is based on the village’s logo with the addition of the words “celebrating 150 years” beneath Riverside’s name. The green leaves from the village’s logo are instead gold to represent the anniversary, while the inside ring surrounding the leaves is green instead of blue. The standard logo’s outer blue ring and other elements are unchanged.
Finally, the committee has “begun conversations” with Riverside Elementary School District 96 and its superintendent, Martha Ryan-Toye, “to develop a fourth- or fifth-grade project-based learning proposal related to the village’s incorporation … in lieu of a current grade-based assignment [so] not to burden teachers in the schools,” Sowl said.
The committee and D96’s music and theater programs are also working together to recreate the village’s centennial pageant from 1975, “At the Bend in the River,” for the 2024-25 or 2025-26 school year.
“We’re actually currently looking for the musical score, so if someone in town has a recording of that, that would be greatly appreciated,” Sowl said.
