It’s been years since the historic Acker’s’ Furniture sign was taken down from the exterior of what is now 10C with the promise of restoration, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be making a public appearance any time soon.
The whopping 25-feet-tall sign was displayed at 42 Carden St. building for decades, but came down in 2016 for exterior renovations after 10C and Chalmers Community Services Centre bought the building from the Acker family.
Six years later, it’s still in storage.
“When we took the sign down, the goal was to bring it back,” said Julia Grady, the executive director of 10C.
But the sign wasn’t structurally sound, and needed to be refurbished before it could be put back up.
“We took it down, put it into storage, had it documented, and then began kind of pricing out with a sign company what restoration could look like.”
That process could cost anywhere between $25,000 to $40,000 – money 10C just doesn’t have to spare.
“It’s a pretty big sign,” she said of the large price tag.
“It’s not as simple as just putting the sign back up. There are structural elements for it to be reattached to the building for safety and electrical, and then looking at the city’s current signage policy and navigating around that, so there is a decent amount of external expertise that is needed to move it forward,” she said.
The Acker’s owned the property for around 100 years, having purchased it in 1916.
“It’s a pretty iconic, old neon sign,” she said. “I think preserving history in place is interesting and important. So if we had a chance to do that with the sign, we would.”
On its own, Grady doesn’t see 10C having the financial capacity to get the sign restored and back up. But she’s still hopeful it will happen at some point.
“We would need there to be other community members who wish for the sign to be back up and who could support either helping us move that forward as a project or with some funding,” she said.
So far, a few community members have shown interest, but they need more, and said if enough people reached out, they would be open to holding a community meeting or brainstorming session to talk about how to move the project forward.
They plan to look at what the long-term plan is with the sign in the next year, since they’ve been paying to store the sign, and can’t do so indefinitely. But ultimately, they need help from the community.
Anyone interested in the Ackers’ sign restoration is encouraged to reach out to Grady at [email protected].
