Naperville looks to pave way for 'heritage walk'
A group of Downtown Naperville stakeholders will be working this spring and summer on plans to improve wayfinding signs that could eventually incorporate elements of the city's history and culture.
Leaders of the Downtown Naperville Alliance, the Naperville Development Partnership, the city's downtown advisory commission, North Central College and Naper Settlement will focus first on details of a plan to improve the signs that direct drivers and walkers to sites within the downtown.
These signs are old and “inadequate,” said Rick Hitchcock, a downtown advisory commission member who is president of Hitchcock Design Group. They need to be more “sophisticated and comprehensive,” he said, to help people know where to park, shop and eat or where to find places such as the municipal center or the library.
The city has proposed in next year's budget $75,000 for a consultant to assess downtown streetscapes and give advice on how to maintain and improve them. But a study of signage that helps people find their way is not part of that proposed spending, said Jennifer Louden, transportation team leader.
So Hitchcock will lead a group of downtown officials who will explain the importance of wayfinding upgrades and determine the cost of potential improvements before making a pitch for money in a future city budget. Wayfinding improvements then could tie in with the idea of creating a “heritage walk” to recognize significant sites in Naperville history and help people explore them.
“We all recognize that there's a great many historical assets in the community,” Hitchcock said. “Would there be some value in having some kind of structured or semistructured tour — be it self-guided or maybe on occasion guided — some way that visitors might take advantage and learn more about these great assets?”
Naper Settlement officials say the city would benefit from having a system to point out about a dozen historical sites in or near downtown.
The Naper Settlement, DuPage Children's Museum, the old Nichols Library on Washington Street, the Kroehler Family YMCA, North Central College, Central Park and the Riverwalk all are on the list. So is the current Nichols Library, which sits on the site of a former brewery's beer tunnels, the Paddleboat Quarry, Edward Hospital, the cemetery on Washington Street and the Joseph Naper homestead on Jefferson Avenue and Mill Street.
Future signs could help point out these sites to people shopping or walking around the downtown's commercial core. Some, such as Edward Hospital and the DuPage Children's Museum, are a few blocks away. But visitors might be interested in those sites, said downtown advisory commission member and former Naper Settlement Executive Director Peggy Frank — if only people knew they were nearby.
“One of the elements that makes our downtown unique is the cultural ring around our downtown.” Frank said. “But we have no wayfinding that really helps connect that in particular for the pedestrians to realize how close the college is, how close the settlement is or the DuPage Children's Museum and for that matter Centennial Beach and the Carillon.”