Visitors to the Battle of Beaverdams Park in downtown Thorold will now find getting around the green space much easier thanks to the installation of wayfinding signs.
“We have visitors from all over and they were getting turned around in the park,” said Natalie Stickles, who was tasked by Manager of Community Services Dave Baldoni to carry out the wayfinding sign project.
“He thought there was a need to have a locator map,” said Stickles, who is community relations specialist for the City of Thorold.
To get the job done, Stickles turned to Anton Gosley, after seeing his work at Heartland Forest in Niagara Falls.
“I had done their original sign,” Gosley said. “It was a character map of the property, and she remembered that from 15 years ago. They wanted to do something similar here.”
The new signs are part of a $2M investment in improvements being made to the park, with the signs being in the pipeline for a couple of years.
While most of his work is in building design – Gosley has done a lot of work creating exteriors and interiors for attractions on Clifton Hill in the Falls. He created the map design on downtime between other projects.
“I kind of worked on it over a couple of months, I guess, here and there,” the Chippawa resident said. “Because I was busy at the time with Clifton Hill stuff.”
Stickles had all the confidence in the world that Gosley would come up with a great design.
“I knew he would be up for the task,” she said. “And he was excited to come on board.”
The completed signs – there are three others located throughout the park – highlight the butterfly garden located in the park as an example of the City’s efforts to “re-naturalize” Thorold, Stickles said.
All of them are interactive and include QR codes that will take people to the City’s website for more information about the park, Stickles said.
“Down the road, we're going to be building out the history section of our website,” she added. “We're going to change up the QR code to lead to that.”
