Owners of the shopping center at Skillman and Live Oak were having the center’s decades-old sign replaced this morning.
The ball from the top of the old sign
Many Lakewood residents consider the sign a landmark. But don’t worry. Austin-based Stonelake Investments, which bought the center last year, is replacing the old sign with a replica.
The new sign, waiting to be installed.
The new ball
When Lakewood resident Shelly Duignan noticed workers taking the old sign down this morning, she and neighbor Carty Talkington confronted them to find out what was happening to the neighborhood landmark. The workers told them they were scrapping the old sign.
“That sign has been there my whole life, and they’re just going to throw it away,” Talkington says.
But the sign is old, and it’s made of porcelain and neon tubing, says Robert Hall of Bo Handyman, the East Dallas-based contractor the property owner hired to maintain the center. The new sign uses LED components. Once Stonelake heard from Duignan and Talkington, they agreed to put the old sign in storage instead of throwing it out. When I spoke to Hall around lunchtime, he said he had spent most of his morning figuring out how to move and transport the heavy sign into storage.
“(Stonelake) didn’t realize the sign was such a landmark,” Hall says. “It’s change, and people don’t like change, but they’re updating and upgrading the property.”
