Welcome sign retired
Kelowna sign coming down tonight to make way for wider Highway 97
Kelowna’s big welcome sign goes byebye tonight.
The sign, which has greeted visitors to the city for decades at the corner of Highway 97 and Sexsmith-Old Vernon roads, has to come down for a highway-widening project.
A new welcome sign will eventually be erected along Highway 97, city officials say, although the location for the new greeting, and what it might look like, haven’t yet been decided.
“It’s all to be determined in the future,” city spokeswoman Kelly Kay said Monday. “But there’s nothing in the budget for this year.”
The current welcome sign is actually located roughly in the middle of Highway 97 as it winds through Kelowna. It’s 10 kilometres from Kelowna’s northern boundary with Lake Country and about the same distance from the William R. Bennett Bridge.
Most such signs are located at or near a city’s municipal boundary. But the Welcome to Kelowna sign’s location on Highway 97 North dates back decades, to a time before north Glenmore and industrial lands near Winfield were brought into Kelowna.
So, tourists headed into Kelowna have long driven by Duck Lake, the airport and UBC Okanagan before being officially welcomed to the city.
The sign used to say Welcome in five languages — English, French, German, Japanese and Korean. The languages were chosen to reflect where most non-English-speaking visitors to Kelowna come from, city officials say.
But the multilingual sign often sparked complaints from residents upset that their mother tongue was not included.
“Just about every year, we get complaints from various folks who ask us, ‘Why isn’t my language up there?’” city staffer Ian Wilson said in December 2009.
City council decided to end the controversy by removing all greetings in languages other than English and French.
In related news, Lake Country’s plan to replace its welcome sign has hit a speed bump. The existing concrete signs date back to the municipality’s incorporation in the mid-1990s and are considered tired-looking.
Plans were for new signs at the north and south ends of Lake Country that had a 3D effect. However, cost estimates came in higher than expected, so the sign replacement is in limbo.