GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Splashes of color and scenes from the city’s bygone days are in the planning stages, set to converge in the core business district.

The city council on Tuesday accepted a report from a citizen’s committee comprised of artists, civic leaders and business owners outlining the preliminary plans of how a city-supported building mural program can be established.

Committee members presented their proposal, which included raising $10,000 in private cash and in-kind contributions during the next six months had the council approved the measure July 19. However, council members and staff raised multiple concerns saying more research was needed before moving forward.

The idea first surfaced when the city’s communications coordinator, Chris Eversole, asked whether the city had ever considered adopting a mural program. Having worked in other communities that have thriving mural programs, such as Gainesville, Eversole thought such a program would be a way to not only beautify the city but promote tourism and the city’s history and natural resources, such as the springs.

“I started asking some questions six or so months ago about ‘wouldn’t it be great if we had murals,’ as it turns out, a bunch of folks have thought the same thing over time but they’ve never come together. So, now they’re coming together,” Eversole said.

Committee member Sandra Royal, representing the Cala Vida Festival, said murals would play a role in showcasing the city, particularly during the annual festival when guests come to Green Cove Springs.

“We came together with the idea of trying to beautify our city. We’re trying to get people here and when they come, we want them to have something fun to see,” Royal said. “We have some very large blank walls along [U.S.] 17 that would lend themselves beautifully to murals.”

Also presenting the mural concept to city council was Lynn Vincent, a member of the Green Cove Springs Business League who worked with Royal on the committee, who said members are ready to get the program started.

“When this was brought to the business league, the enthusiasm was crazy. Everybody has ideas. Everybody wants to get involved and I’d just like to let the council know that the business league is very interested in getting involved with fundraising, finding volunteers and facilitating some kind of standard program moving forward with this,” Vincent said.

Vincent said the committee agreed that painting three murals would be ideal in kick starting the program. As conceived, the artwork would be agreed upon first, then prints of the artwork would be made and sold to fund the painting itself. However, the committee did not give specifics of how such aspects as corporate sponsorships would play into the actual murals themselves.

“As long as it’s not advertising – once you hit the name of a business, that would trip our sign code,” said Janis Fleet, development services director for the city.

Fleet indicated support for a mural program and cited having recently returned from Philadelphia where she toured that city’s wall mural program, which shows depictions of the city’s past.

“They are huge three, four story buildings with all kinds of historical paintings and so a lot of communities have done this – it’s a way to improve property that are vacant properties…so it’s been used as that in a lot of communities to give a thing for a community to show historic value of that community.”

Committee members called upon the expertise of artist Amy Stump who presented council members with two conceptual pieces of art that could be used as future building murals. One painting was an historical depiction of the old Magnolia Inn, while the second was “an alligator’s view” of Spring Park from the edge of the St. Johns River.

“When we first started talking about this, and said, we don’t have any way on [U.S.] 17 to let people know that we’ve got Spring Park,” said council member Van Royal, who is also Sandra Royal’s husband. “My idea of a mural over the last few years … has been different until I saw Amy’s and then I thought, ‘Wow’ – that being there, I think, is an advertisement for Spring Park and for whatever that you go, ‘Wow, that’s neat’.”

Before council voted on the measure, City Manager Danielle Judd suggested getting with City Attorney Jim Arnold to draft guidelines or an ordinance – whichever would be the most appropriate – to bring the mural concept closer to reality. Judd threw out the idea of possibly expanding the city’s existing pilot matching grant program that matches city funds with business owners’ funds when businesses make specific improvements to a building’s sign or façade.

“Just, for me as city manager, I really would like to see the funding for this not coming on the city and then, if the conduit is, is someone gets a mural concept and puts it in and they have the funds and it would run through the city and whatever and the form is…one page long, it takes somebody five minutes to fill out, they attach something to it and maybe you make this another component of our current grant program, which is, what, landscape, signs, façades.”

Council members and staff also discussed the what-ifs. They want any ordinance that arises out of Tuesday’s 45-minute discussion to include language that will prohibit anything offensive or political from ending up on buildings in the city, which is also why Judd and Fleet said the city’s sign ordinance may need amending to include painted murals.

“We can always change our code to require murals to be approved by the council. We have various ways of doing this to make sure the city maintains the control of what they want. We have our CBD and Gateway Corridor design standards and we can easily add a section about building painting – there’s a lot of stuff we can do to make sure that we don’t sit back and say, ‘Oh my God, how did we allow this’,” Fleet said.

At the same time, Judd reiterated that she wants this program to be citizen-led, not a government project.

“For me, as city manager, I just want to make it clear – I do not want the city in this project. I really want this to perc up from the community. I’m just indicating – at the end of the day – if there’s a process thing that we can do through the matching grant thing or something, fine, but I would really like to see this come forth from the community and the groups and the business league and the artists and let that creativity flow if you will,” Judd said.

After the discussion, council voted unanimously to accept the committee’s report and move the proposal along to the research and draft ordinance phase.

In other business, the council informally agreed by consensus to host the Clay County Board of Commissioners in a public forum on July 28 at 6:30 p.m. in council chambers. Judd said the city was asked to host the meeting by county so it can make a public presentation regarding the Aug. 30 ballot measure for extending the one-cent sales tax surtax, of which the city gets a portion to use on capital projects. One project, for example, is the current restoration and re-design of Spring Park.