By Megan Kelley

Review Writer

Lake Orion’s Downtown Development Authority Board of Directors met on April 12 and received a presentation from Jimmy Johnson from the Orion Historical Society about placing potential historical signage throughout the downtown.

What Johnson calls “A Moment in Time” is something that the Historical Society has brought to the DDA before but was not something the board took action on at that time.

“This project started about a year-and-a-half ago and started from my idea of comparing to other downtown cities having historical plates or historic signage showing what was there in these buildings before,” Johnson said.

Seven signs were proposed with locations at Green’s Park, Fork N’ Pint, Verwood Apartments, Ed’s Broadway Gift and Costume, 313 Pizza, Hanson’s Running Shop and in the grass area on the southern corner of Flint Street and M-24 in front of Auto-Zone.

The signs proposed for downtown buildings would be 15-inch-by-15-inch that would be affixed to a handful of downtown buildings.

The sign on the corner of Flint Street and M-24 is expected to be a much larger slanted sign, and the signs at Green’s Park will also be much larger.

Signs would include an old photo of the building, history of the building and a description of what life was like back then. Additionally, signs would include a QR code that leads to the history section on the DDA’s website.

The DDA approved the joint project, splitting the cost 50-50 with the historical society. The board authorized a budget adjustment to move money into the Historic Celebration/Education fund from their Wayfinding fund and then approved an amount not to exceed $1,800 for the DDA’s portion of the project.

The goal is to have most, if not all, of the signs up by the middle of May when the Flower Fair returns to town, to keep the signs up for an indefinite amount of time and potentially add more signs in the future, Johnson said.