Roundabout art gets a green light

SANDPOINT — The ideas went around and around.

This week though, the city art commission’s plan to add art to the roundabout got a green light.

The Urban Renewal committee agreed to fund a public art project in its northern district that includes adding steel cutouts to the roundabout, along with indigenous plants.

The steel cutouts, or banners, currently hang from poles in Sandpoint’s downtown.

“A couple of them have fallen down,” art commission chair Carol Deaner said.

And a few of the six-foot tall steel banners were taken down out of necessity, she said.

The banners depicting wildlife, sportsmen and women and vistas will be removed from the poles along First Avenue and placed on piers in the roundabout.

The project is estimated to cost $7,000.

Because the banners, which will be framed and set on concrete piers approximately two feet off the ground, will likely block the view for motorists entering the roundabout, John Corn, of the urban renewal committee, voiced concerns.

“I’m not worried about design,” Corn said. “I’m just concerned about crashes.”

Other members had similar apprehensions.

Motorists entering roundabouts often pay too much attention to traffic across from them, senior city planner and arts commission liaison Joan Bramblee said. They take their eyes of the immediate danger: traffic to their left.

The steel banners would get motorists to focus to what is coming, not what is entering or leaving on the other side of the roundabout.

“If you are not seeing traffic on the far side, you are paying more attention to the traffic coming at you immediately to the left,” Bramblee said.

The money to pay for the project would come out of urban renewal’s budget for the northern district.

The budget however was shy the cost of the project.

“The bottom line for us,” said committee member Chris Schreiber, “is we do not have it in our budget.”

In the end though the committee opted to pay out the $6,600 it had saved for the northern district.

The money will pay for the bulk of the work, including the framing and installing of steel banners, pouring concrete piers, and having the native plant society recommend indigenous plants for the center of the roundabout.

The work could begin this fall, Bramblee said.

Eight of the more than a dozen downtown banners —they measure 6-6 tall by 2-4 wide — will be placed two feet inside the rim of the roundabout’s concrete circle.

“We’re looking for other places to use the rest of them,” Bramblee said.