Landmarks Commission Tables Controversial “Made in Oregon” Sign Change

After a packed two hour meeting today, Portland’s historic landmark’s commission voted to send the team planning to change downtown’s “Made in Oregon” sign to “University of Oregon” back to the drawing board to tweak the exact look of the slogan change — but did not object to changing the sign’s phrase itself.

The debate about the sign revolves around Portland identity, branding and what is “historic” about the historic landmark. The 52-foot neon sign costs tens of thousands of dollars a year to maintain and will go dark without a sponsor. The University of Oregon, which is planning to move some offices into the building the sign sits on, has paid for the sign’s upkeep since last January wants to change the phrase “Made in Oregon” to “University of Oregon.” The rest of the sign — the “Old Town” at the bottom, the white stag outline on top, the cute little Christmas Rudolf nose — are all staying, but the plan to change the sign’s now-iconic central phrase has touched off a storm of debate.

“We got a whole bunch of letters on this, about 4-1 in opposition to the change,” said city planner Mark Walhood at the design commission meeting today, “There is a Facebook cause page with over 7,000 members, which I think that’s the first time a city land use issue has gotten a Facebook page.” Other than the Facebook presence, Walhood says the current discussion is “virtually the same” as the heated debate the occurred in 1997 when the sign changed from “White Stag” to “Made in Oregon,” a local sportswear company. The sign has evolved through several slogans since it was first put up next to the river in the 1940s as an ad for “White Satin Sugar.”

“The sign without a sponsor cannot exist. It’s too expensive to leave there,” says Darryl Paulsen, whose company Ramsay Signs has maintained the sign since it was built. “Someone has to sponsor the sign and the university, like people who have been in that building in the past, would like to have their name on it.”

It turns out that while the sign’s size and shape are carefully regulated since it is a historic landmark, the actual message on the sign falls under Oregon free speech rights and cannot be controlled.
Critics of the ‘University of Oregon’ slogan wrote into the design commission to suggest better messages, including “Education is the Future” “Live it in Oregon” and “Do it in Oregon.” Bleck. I think it’s really only worth muscling through a controversial sign re-naming process and shelling out tens of thousands of dollars in neon maintenance if you’re going to take full advantage of your first amendment rights in shaping the most visible icon of Portland’s identity.

Better ideas:

More official and neighborhood voices in the debate – plus background on the city planning staff’s recommendation to deny the change – below the cut.

At the meeting Monday afternoon, University of Oregon advocates spoke up in favor of the change, pointing out that higher education funding is in dire straights these days and could use the publicity of the prominent location.
Terry Naito, daughter-in-law of the famous Bill Naito who pushed for historic landmark status for the sign in 1978, described the sign as “living history.” “It has changed with every generation in Portland,” said Naito. “This sign should not be frozen in time or, worse, lose sponsorship and be dismantled.”

Critics of the change said the sign is a core piece of Portland identity, as architecturally iconic as Seattle’s space needle and St. Louis’s arch. “The words ‘Made in Oregon’ establishes pride in our community,” said one Portland resident. Several people articulated that University of Oregon is as an aspect of Eugene identity, not Portland.
PSU student body president Hannah Fisher said changing the sign would erode the working relationship between PSU and O of U. “We all need to fundraise, we all need to raise our visibility. But not at the risk of overshadowing one another. To ignore that, based on content, I do not think is fair,” said Fisher.
City planner Mark Walhood says he received over 300 emails about the sign, including 90 last week in favor of the change after U of O sent out an email encouraging people to write in. Walhood’s staff report on the historic landmark recommended denying the change, but not for the reasons most people are yelling about. Instead, Walhood says the size and scale of the “University of Oregon” letters don’t meet the historic character of the sign because they’re too small and too squished. Also, the UofO sign tosses out the historic “unique cut off ‘g’ and upper-case ‘E'” that “Made in Oregon” recycled from “White Stag”.

Darryl Paulsen, of Ramsay Signs, defended the new text as looking and reading better than the “quirky historic” text. In Paulsen’s opinion, while the message of the sign is what gets people up in arms, the sign’s iconic qualities don’t relate to its slogan. “The message is secondary. The Oregon outline of the sign, the lighting of the nose, these are the tradition.”

For the Landmarks Commission, the debate boiled down to font and private enterprise.
Commission member Harris Matarazzo cited size and massing of the letters as concerns. “The sign is iconic, it’s bigger than the brand.”
“The history that’s being invoked is the history of the most recent sort, the last ten years,” said Historic Landmarks Commission member Richard Engeman, who continued that the sign is an important landmark. “On the other hand, I’m old enough to have seen all of those changes and not let any of them disturb me.”
The Landmarks Commission sent the sign team back to the drawing board to remake the sign with a font that is “more 1950s” in its “speed and angularity”, to keep the “quirky E” and recommended smaller letters for the University slogan. The record is now reopened for public comment and the sign will be up for an official vote again on April 6th.