Apopka’s brand new ‘Welcome’ sign ... isn’t

The Apopka City Council rolled out the unwelcome mat this week for a “welcoming” gateway on the city’s west side. The council rejected it, 3-2. The $24,500, limestone-andsteel monument with fountains would have read, “Welcome to the City of Apopka, Come Grow With Us.” The “o” in grow would have been shaped like a leaf, a nod to the city’s agricultural roots.

“I just don’t think it completely reflects who we are as a community,” said Commissioner Doug Bankson, who cast one of the three votes against the sign.

Apopka, like other Central Florida communities, has decided recently to “rebrand” its identity with updated or reshaped gateway signs and a new logo.

With a population nearing 48,000, Apopka is Orange County’s second-largest city after Orlando. It has shed much of its deeply rooted farming past. Many nurseries and greenhouses have given way to new residential development, but the city’s existing signs still bill the community as “the indoor foliage capital of the world.”

The proposed landmark was intended to greet thousands of motorists, who enter the city from the John Land Apopka Expressway, a toll road named after the city’s iconic former mayor. The sign would have been erected near Vick Road and Old Dixie Highway, a block north of U.S. Highway 441 across from Apopka Elementary School. It was to be the first of many similar signs at the city’s entrances.

Gently rolling Vick Road leads past Apopka High School, manicured neighborhoods and a golf course. Visitors often travel the road en route to the Northwest Recreation Complex, where the city stages youth sports tournaments, the Old Florida Outdoor Festival, concerts and July 4th fireworks.

“If you’re coming to town to go to the amphitheater at the Northwest Recreation Center, which thousands of people do every weekend, you will pass by that sign and it will say, ‘Welcome to Apopka,’ ” Mayor Joe Kilsheimer said.

But Bankson wanted to rethink the marquee’s design theme; fellow commissioner Kyle Becker didn’t like the proposed location; and longtime commissioner Billie Dean just said nay.

The city probably hasn’t said its final good-bye to welcoming signs.

“We will come up with a Plan B,” the mayor said. “We need a way to better establish our identity with our guests and with our residents. … And that begins with welcome signs.”

The idea for gateway signs sprouted from a series of brainstorming community meetings designed to figure out what Apopka residents want and how to make it happen.

Resident Susan Kidd, who attended the visioning meetings, recalled that the city was supposed to undertake a “branding and marketing exercise” before etching a new image in stone.

“Are we really sure exactly what direction we’re headed in or are we still figuring out where we are headed as a city,” she said. “A sign like this is going to be extremely visible to everybody entering the city.”

The sign’s design emphasized growth — memorializing Apopka’s agricultural past and embracing cultivation of a different future.