UMATILLA — A new Umatilla sign structure now greets motorists driving past the intersection of highways 395 and 730.

The large circular structure features the city’s name in large letters around the structure with eight basalt columns rising from the middle. All materials used on the project were sourced from local quarries, City Manager David Stockdale said.

It’s the first phase and centerpiece of the city’s Wayfinding Master Plan.

Umatilla Sign structure was completed Feb. 3.

“There’s a couple of loose ends here and there, but at this point we’re calling it finished,” Stockdale said.

The idea for the new sign structure came from goals adopted in 2019 by the Umatilla City Council focusing on beautification and revitalization of the community, Stockdale said.

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. Preliminary work began in 2020 but was put on hold during the COVID pandemic when money for the project was diverted to helping local businesses stay open.

The project cost the city $1.34 million but could have been much more had the city gone ahead with its original plan to surround the structure with water, which would have cost the city another $500,000.

“That would not have been fiscally prudent,” Stockdale said. Instead, cement was used to fill in the circular structure.

The money went into the project’s design, engineering, the permitting process and construction.

The city had to get permits from the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office as well as having the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation sign off on the project to ensure there were no historical resources at the site.

Stockdale and the city are excited about the new signage with more to come.

“It’s the very first step of a large and sophisticated wayfinding plan,” Stockdale said.

Two more signs will be placed within the city this year – one for Nugent Park and another for the Umatilla Marina & RV Park.

The sign structure’s location was a key element of what Stockdale calls the city’s “legacy project.”

“It’s in the middle of the city and doesn’t favor any one part of town,” he said. J.U.B. Engineers, out of the Tri-Cities, designed the project.

The structure’s outer ring wall is 50 feet in diameter and the inner ring wall is 22 feet in diameter. The sign is stainless steel and powder coated and was built by Cascade Civil Corp.

“It’s intended to last a generation — about 20 years, but we think it will last significantly longer than that,” Stockdale said. “The basalt columns are timeless — they are thousands of years old.”

Both the city name and basalt columns are lit up so they are visible at night. The lettering used in the city’s name is made from 3form Glass designed to withstand the.

“It’s a pretty new technology,” Stockdale said. “It’s a strengthened modern-age epoxy. What’s nice about it is it’s about 95 percent UV resistant so it will only fade very, very little and it’s unbelievably durable. Being in an intersection, one of the things we were worried about was vehicles driving by just flinging rocks like they do. This needed to be able to withstand things like that so that (the lettering) doesn’t chip or break. A rock being thrown at it doesn’t really do anything to it.”

The city applied for a few grants for the project, but did not receive them.

“This was paid for out of General Fund dollars,” Stockdale said. “The city set money aside for this project for four years before we started spending the funds on design and engineering of the project.”

Design work was done in 2023-24 and construction of the project began late last year and took three months to complete.

Stockdale said the new sign structure has received “overwhelmingly positive” feedback from the community.

“The only complaint is the $1 million spent on it,” he said. “One of the reasons this project was so expensive is we quite literally stuck it in the middle of two highways and it’s underneath power poles. You have to pay a premium for hazard pay when construction crews are underneath power lines and working in the middle of highways.

“And it’s 100-percent customized with a specialized design. The concrete work out there is customized; the sign was custom built and it’s all specialized work.”

Going forward, the city council is expected to formally adopt the Wayfinding Master Plan on Tuesday, Feb 18.

“And then we have, in our adopted budget, funding to install the two signs at Nugent Park and Umatilla Marina & RV Park,” Stockdale said.