OCEAN CITY — After months of debate about the paint scheme for the town’s water tower at 64th Street, it appears the final design will closely resemble what is currently on the water tower.
Over the last several months, Ocean City officials have debated the design for the municipal water tower at 64th Street near the Route 90 entrance to the resort. The discussion moved from a Coca-Cola sponsored design to a golf ball and tee design including the town’s Eagle’s Landing logo to a replica of the beach ball design at 1st Street to the tried and true basic blue.
After more debate on Monday, it appears the latter will be the final choice including the basic light blue design with a darker blue stripe welcoming and thank-you message and the town’s sunburst logo with a leaping white marlin. Even then, the council could not agree on the specifics of the final design and sent Public Works Director Hal Adkins and his staff back to the contract bidder to seek lower cost estimates on certain tweaks including removing the darker blue strip around the center of the tower.
The project was budgeted for $250,000 and there were several options on the table. Early on, the Mayor and Council nixed the idea of Coca-Cola putting its logo and welcoming message on the 64th Street water tower, calling the proposal a “sell out” to commercial interests. That led to a discussion of replicating the beach ball design on the water tower at 1st Street or the golf ball and tee design with the Eagle’s Landing logo, but those ideas got little traction for a variety of reasons including the potential cost.
Adkins explained on Monday the lowest bidder for the project was rejected because of less-than-stellar reviews during the bid review process. That led to zeroing in on D&M Painting, which was the second lowest bidder and has contracted with the town before to paint water towers including the tower in question at 64th Street.
D&M Painting offered a variety of designs at the varying costs including around $188,000 for simply painting the water tower the basic blue without the logo. If the contractor paints the tower the basic blue with the town’s sunburst logo and a similar welcome and thank-you message, the cost jumped to $220,000.
Replicating the beach ball design would cost around $278,000, while the Eagle’s Landing golf ball design would cost nearly $346,000. After considerable debate on Monday, the council ultimately decided on the second option, which will essentially replicate what is currently on the 64th Street water tower, but even that wasn’t easy. Despite coming in about $30,000 under what was budgeted for the project, the council could not agree on a final design and sent Adkins and his staff back to the contractor for further tweaking.
Councilman Wayne Martin suggested staff and the contractor explore a vinyl application for the town logo and welcome message in the interest of possibly saving more money and made a motion to that affect, but the motion died for lack of a second. Hartman pointed out the old Dew Tour design on the former water tower at Worcester Street was a vinyl application, but Adkins explained the vinyl design did not hold up well under the harsh conditions in the resort.
“It’s up to you all, but I would never recommend another vinyl applique for the water towers,” he said. “It wasn’t always obvious from afar, but that quickly began to bubble and peel. You guys are the bosses, but I wouldn’t recommend that.”
Hartman said there could be two contracts for the project, one for painting the tower the basic blue and another for applying the town logo, whether it was painted or a vinyl applique. That idea got little traction with the council. Councilman Tony DeLuca then made a motion to accept the second option, which is the basic blue tower with the same logo and blue stripe containing the welcome and thank-you message. That option, which essentially replaces the existing scheme, comes in around $30,000 under budget. However, there were still questions raised about the final design.
Councilman Dennis Dare suggested the darker blue stripe around the center of the tank might not be necessary and suggested exploring the cost of just painting the tower basic blue with the town logo.
“That blue stripe detracts from the message,” he said. “I’ve asked people what message is on this tower or that tower and they say they don’t know. What if we took that darker blue stripe with the white letters out and made it light blue with darker blue letters.”
Hartman persisted on getting different bids for the basic tower paint job and the logo design. However, Adkins said that would complicate the issue.
“You would run the risk because you’d basically have two painting contractors,” he said. “We could run into warranty issues.”
Councilman John Gehrig attempted to be a voice of reason in the debate.
“If we’re talking about changing it, whoever is painting this tower needs a final design,” he said. “We need to sign off on an approved design so we know exactly what’s going up there.”
Adkins, who has overseen dozens of water tower paint jobs in his long career with the town, said there was a time when the design was simple.
“I remember the days when we just had the blue design with the sunburst and white marlin logo with no welcome or thank-you message,” he said. “What I’m hearing tonight is to come back with estimates for a design without the blue band.”
DeLuca pointed out the councilmembers were not well-versed on water tower designs.
“None of us up here are experts on paint designs and colors,” he said. “This should probably go to [town advertising firm] MGH. This is basically outdoor advertising and none of us have expertise in this.”
Adkins said the debate had probably reached the point where a final decision was needed.
“This is all so subjective,” he said. “We could be up here for weeks debating some of these things.”
After considerable debate, the council voted unanimously to award the contract to the second-lowest bidder for the basic blue paint job with the town logo and instructed Adkins and staff to meet with the contractor and come back with design options with and without the dark blue band around the center.
