Lighted Exterior Signage That Made a Midtown Landmark Impossible to Miss

CLIENT

The Ensemble Theatre is one of the oldest and largest professional African American theatres in the country and an anchor of Houston's Midtown Cultural District.

Founded in 1976, the Theatre owns and operates its own facility and produces a full season of professional productions along with touring and educational programming. Its building has been part of the Midtown streetscape for decades, long before the surrounding blocks began redeveloping.

(Image: The Ensemble Theater)

OPPORTUNITY

By early 2016, Midtown was growing quickly around the Theatre, and attendance was not growing with it.

New residential and commercial construction was reshaping the district on every side. The Theatre's board and staff recognized that the building had stopped announcing itself. Existing signage was dated, low in contrast against the facade, and effectively invisible after dark, which is exactly when audiences arrive for a performance.

The organization evaluated its options and found that upgrading the signage was the most cost effective way to make the building easy to find in the middle of all that development. The Ensemble Theatre pursued grant funding on that basis and secured $100,000 from arts foundations including the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Arts Respond Cultural District Project.

ACTION

With funding in place, the Theatre reviewed proposals from architectural design firms and sign companies across Houston and selected Saifee Signs & Graphics.

The decision came down to the strength of the design concept and our willingness to coordinate directly with the City of Houston on permitting and with the Theatre Board through every approval step. A cultural institution spending grant money answers to more stakeholders than a typical commercial client, and the process had to account for that.

Our team built a plan that replaced the dated signage, introduced illuminated signage for night identification, and changed the facade surface color to create the contrast the original signs never had. Design, value engineering, permitting, fabrication, and installation were managed under one contract, so one company owned the result and the Theatre had a single point of accountability from concept through final inspection. The program was manufactured and installed on time and on budget, and the project was completed in August 2016.

RESULTS

A building that identifies itself from every approach, day and night.

Following the August 2016 completion, The Ensemble Theatre reported renewed enthusiasm among its regular patrons and growing interest from neighboring cultural institutions and the new residential communities around it.

The Theatre is now clearly identified from all sides of the property and reads just as strongly at curtain time as it does at midday. For an organization whose visibility problem was costing it audience in a district that was otherwise booming, the signage did the work that the marketing budget could not.