Leadership San Benito County plans sign on San Felipe near new
bypass
A seven-by-12-foot sign that would welcome motorists to the
north end of Hollister near the Hwy. 25 bypass is in the works at
the former site of South Valley Trailers.
Sponsored by Leadership San Benito County, a program that trains
people to be aware of and interact with their community, the sign
would be located where an abandoned building now sits on the
southwest corner of the year-old bypass as it intersects San Felipe
Road.
Leadership San Benito County plans sign on San Felipe near new bypass
A seven-by-12-foot sign that would welcome motorists to the north end of Hollister near the Hwy. 25 bypass is in the works at the former site of South Valley Trailers.
Sponsored by Leadership San Benito County, a program that trains people to be aware of and interact with their community, the sign would be located where an abandoned building now sits on the southwest corner of the year-old bypass as it intersects San Felipe Road.
The San Benito County Council of Governments, which owns the land, plans to solicit bids to sell and remove the building, avoiding demolition costs.
Lisa Rheinheimer, executive director of COG, said the two- to three-week bid process will begin either this month or next, with the hope that the small building, which also formerly housed a gas station, will be removed in the next few months.
“I’ve had a call from an interested person,” she said. “They would take the building away and remove any slab, then grade it. If we can sell it and put money back into the Hwy. 25 bypass project, great. I’d much rather have someone buy it than pay someone to demolish it.”
Jerry Muenzer, a member of this year’s Leadership class, said he and his classmates hope to have the project completed by August, when their term ends.
“There’s no ‘Welcome to Hollister’ sign anywhere,” said Muenzer, who owns Muenzer’s Cyclery on Fifth Street and is running for supervisor this year in District 4. “The city is doing one through the RDA on the west side of town as part of the West Gateway improvements. The other site we talked about was out at the sewer ponds on the 156, but that would be duplicating what the city’s doing. We wanted to keep it closer to town. That just seemed like a logical place.”
Each year’s Leadership class selects one or more projects “that are sustainable and beneficial to the community,” Muenzer said, noting that the sign idea has been broached before.
Rheinheimer said the project “is a great one” for the Leadership group. “It would be seen by thousands of motorists and people coming to Hollister.”
Contractors have been identified that would donate their labor for the sign installation on the project, Muenzer said.
Local architect David Huboi, who designed San Juan Bautista’s “Welcome to History” sign, has sketched a hand-drafted elevation of the proposed “Welcome to Hollister” sign, featuring an image of the Veterans Memorial Building, the Masonic Lodge clock tower and some mountains. It also notes that Hollister was founded in 1872 and features room for commemorative plaques.
His design calls for the sign to be created on marine-grade plywood with high-density polymers and concrete piers. As requested by COG, the sign would be formulated so that it would break away if struck by a vehicle at the heavily-traveled intersection.
The sign could also be moved in the future when Hwy. 25 is expanded to a four-lane roadway from San Felipe to the Santa Clara County line.
“That project will cost $300 million, which we won’t have at any time in the near future,” Rheinheimer said. “In the meantime, a monument sign is perfectly appropriate.”
Huboi said the letters on the sign, as he designed it, would be raised and would be either metallic or acrylic. Project organizers said they hope to use solar-powered lights to illuminate the sign at night and they plan to put drought-resistant plants around it.
“Everybody I’ve shown it to seems to like it,” Huboi said. “Hopefully, as we go through the approval process, I’ll get feedback from the community to make it the best sign possible.”
