Union Station in downtown Wichita will soon feature an 8-foot by 3-foot illuminated sign that the historic preservation board warned could “damage or destroy the building.”
The City Council voted 5-2 Tuesday to override the preservation board’s recommendation and allow Simmons Bank to install the sign on the front facade of the former railway station on east Douglas.
The bank has signed a lease with Occidental Management for 15,000 square feet of space in Union Station, which it will use both for a retail branch and a regional office.
Union Station itself is not listed on any historic registry, but it is listed as a “key contributing structure” in the east Douglas Avenue Historic District, which is on both the state and national register of historic places.
Representatives for the bank said they plan to fasten the sign to the building’s mortar joints to avoid penetrating any stone.
“Mortar is not permanent and often needs to be replaced, reinstalled on a regular basis,” Planning Director Scott Wadle told the council during a marathon 10-hour meeting Tuesday.
After Simmons’ initial request was denied by the preservation board in July, the board formed a design review committee to come up with possible solutions for signage but “no alternative options were determined to be feasible for the applicant,” Wadle said.
“In the initial meeting, we were denied . . . based on the spatial determinations — colors, size, placement — they didn’t like any of it. They tore us apart on it,” said Mike Drury of Chandler Signs in Dallas, which represented Simmons.
Wadle said a pole sign would not be permissible on Union Station’s zoning lot without a special waiver. Drury said there was a discussion about erecting a “small monument” for the sign in front of the station but that doing so would require tearing up a significant amount of landscape, as well as some border concrete and brick.
No members of the historic preservation board spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, but council member J.V. Johnston shared a written comment from Chad Glenn, an architect who voted against the sign request before leaving the preservation board and joining the design council.
“The front facade of the structure is the most historically significant element of the building and an icon for the community,” Glenn said. “They proposed a sign in a location that was never intended to have signage, setting a dangerous precedent for the rest of those elements to be covered in signage.”
Wadle said preservation board members expressed unhappiness with asymmetrical signage that would only appear on one side of the facade. But they weren’t keen on Simmons’ proposal to put identical signs on either side of the building either.
Drury said the new sign isn’t actually going to be as out of character for the building as some people may fear.
“Believe it or not, illuminated channel letters are historic materials. The only thing that has changed in those letters in the last hundred years has been, we use aluminum instead of sheet metal, we use LEDs instead of neon, and we use modified acrylic instead of plain plastic for the places,” Drury said.
Under a 2022 agreement between the city and the Kansas state historic preservation officer, City Council can rule on appeals instead of the appeal process running through Topeka. Council members Johnston and Mike Hoheisel cast the only votes against rejecting the preservation board’s recommendation.
“Usually I’m pro-signs, pro-business. But in this case, I will not be,” Johnston said.
Council member Becky Tuttle said she wouldn’t want to risk the leasing agreement at Union Station falling through over signage. Construction on the bank in the railway station is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.
“I believe the best way to save historic buildings is to use them,” Tuttle said. “And if we don’t use historic buildings, they will remain shuttered and vacant and then they will not be able to be occupied, so I think that this is a good compromise. I think everybody tried to work to get to yes, which is the Wichita spirit.”
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