Kingston Letters Kingston Yard Header2

Cedar Rapids Kingston Yard’s Place­mak­ing Sig­nage Cre­ates Urban Landmark

Ear­ly pro­duc­tion design part­ner­ship elim­i­nat­ed bid con­fu­sion, sav­ing time and money.

Down­town Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has under­gone sig­nif­i­cant changes. Dur­ing a his­toric flood in 2008, the Cedar Riv­er cov­ered 10 square miles, dis­plac­ing more than 18,000 res­i­dents and dam­ag­ing hun­dreds of city facil­i­ties. In 2020, a dere­cho that pro­duced 140 mph winds caused $11 bil­lion in dam­age. With the addi­tion of flood­walls and river­bank improve­ments came an oppor­tu­ni­ty to revi­tal­ize one area of the city that had tak­en the brunt of the damage.

Engi­neer­ing, Art, and Brand­ing Come Togeth­er for Land­mark Sign

Kingston Yard, an urban devel­op­ment along the west bank of the Cedar Riv­er, was built to be Cedar Rapids’ pre­mier out­door enter­tain­ment dis­trict. Kingston Yard’s archi­tects, OPN Archi­tects, want­ed to attract peo­ple to the area with a bold, icon­ic land­mark sign that would serve as a place­mak­ing fea­ture and draw atten­tion from I‑380 and through­out the down­town cor­ri­dor. Their idea was to use the much-need­ed park­ing garage for some much-need­ed sig­nage. Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from the Kansas City Pow­er & Light Dis­trict and Seattle’s Pike Place Mar­ket, the goal was to ele­vate a sim­ple park­ing struc­ture into a mem­o­rable, brand­ed beacon.

OPN part­nered with Lat­i­tude Sig­nage + Design ear­ly to ensure that no sig­nage details were lost. The OPN team pro­vid­ed orig­i­nal con­cepts and engaged in our Plan­ning + Design process to review all details, code, and struc­tur­al and engi­neer­ing plans, begin­ning to cre­ate pro­duc­tion draw­ings that ensure the sig­nage is built to high-qual­i­ty spec­i­fi­ca­tions. The pro­duc­tion draw­ing process — which brought togeth­er design­ers, exte­ri­or fab­ri­ca­tors, installers, and engi­neers — elim­i­nat­ed any ambi­gu­i­ty that could have hin­dered the man­u­fac­tur­ing and instal­la­tion phases.

*Night­time pho­to cred­it below: City of Cedar Rapids
 

Kingston Collage Nighttime 1800

Cus­tom Sign Design for Unique Installation

Kingston Neon Look Letter A 400

Visu­al inspi­ra­tion pro­vid­ed by OPN includ­ed 5’9” let­ters spelling out ​“KINGSTON YARD” and ​“CEDAR RAPIDS” to be bot­tom-mount­ed to the top of the five-sto­ry park­ing garage. But mount­ing con­straints and lim­it­ed sur­face space at the garage’s top deck pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. Any solu­tion that com­pro­mised valu­able park­ing space was a non-starter.

Our Direc­tor of Design, Eugene Peart, kept the key­words ​“cool, urban, and edgy” in mind as he began the design process. While some of the world’s most icon­ic sig­nage is made of neon, Peart want­ed to use a more reli­able, mod­ern alter­na­tive that would be more effi­cient and ser­vice­able while stay­ing true to the design intent.

Eugene craft­ed let­ters with rout­ed push-through acrylic mid­lines, mim­ic­k­ing the glow and look of clas­sic neon tubes. He even includ­ed strate­gi­cal­ly placed line breaks in the mid­lines to add authen­tic­i­ty. The 5’9” let­ters achieve a vibrant, neon-like aes­thet­ic. This neon sign look is a great exam­ple of form meet­ing func­tion. It’s visu­al­ly strik­ing from a great dis­tance, and it’s also durable and low-main­te­nance.
 

Kingston Collage Nighttime 1800

Engi­neer­ing the Sign for the Space

Kingston Letters Backside 500

It was vital to main­tain the park­ing garage’s func­tion, form, and code com­pli­ance. All sig­nage need­ed to be eas­i­ly ser­vice­able and struc­tural­ly sound. Cus­tom mount­ing plat­forms were fab­ri­cat­ed to effi­cient­ly house elec­tri­cal com­po­nents and allow future ser­vic­ing from the top deck with­out the need for a crane.

Each let­ter is bot­tom-mount­ed on 18” cus­tom steel columns attached to pil­lars of the park­ing struc­ture. This elim­i­nates the need for addi­tion­al struc­tur­al sup­ports, sav­ing space. The cus­tom plates cre­at­ed sta­bil­i­ty for the sign with­out sac­ri­fic­ing aesthetics.

While stan­dard chan­nel let­ters often leave raw fab­ri­ca­tion com­po­nents and wiring exposed on the reverse side, this project demand­ed a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent lev­el of archi­tec­tur­al pre­ci­sion because the back­side of the sign is high­ly vis­i­ble to the pub­lic. To elim­i­nate this aes­thet­ic risk, Latitude’s engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing teams treat­ed each enclo­sure not as a basic let­ter, but as a ful­ly resolved, stand­alone mini-mon­u­ment sign. We engi­neered seam­less, fin­ished back­sides that com­plete­ly con­cealed all inter­nal com­po­nents, fas­ten­ing hard­ware, and struc­tur­al ele­ments, ensur­ing the sig­nage looks immac­u­late from every angle. By antic­i­pat­ing how the sign would inter­act with its envi­ron­ment, we were able to deliv­er a pol­ished, high-end archi­tec­tur­al fea­ture rather than a stan­dard prod­uct.
 

Sim­ple Sign or Smart Urban Design?

The Kingston Yard park­ing garage sign is an exam­ple of how engi­neer­ing, art, and brand­ing can come togeth­er in urban design. The final instal­la­tion deliv­ered every­thing the client envi­sioned: bold, mem­o­rable, and func­tion­al. The sig­nage has become a stand­out fea­ture in down­town Cedar Rapids, vis­i­ble from major routes and help­ing to brand the dis­trict with thought­ful placemaking.

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