A new logo will soon grace the south side of the Owensboro Municipal Utilities water tower located just off Frederica Street. The design features a banjo that serves as the first letter of Owensboro, along with the tagline “Bluegrass Music Capital of the World” below the name of the city.
OMU’s Board of Commissioners approved the logo Thursday.
The logo was a product of a collaboration with Owensboro’s Bluegrass Music Capital of the World Task Force.
“We were contacted by the mayor and the Bluegrass Task Force that the mayor’s put together, and they asked us to consider highlighting the community’s rich bluegrass history with that logo,” OMU General Manager Tim Lyons said.
Lyons said the original plan was to simply paint a fresh version of the current logo (just the word Owensboro with two wavy lines like a river over the top of the letters), which would have cost $16,415. The design of the logo they are going with instead costs $22,265, largely because of the finer details of the banjo, font and color.
The tower cleaning/repainting was originally expected to finish on Aug. 15, but due to weather delays the estimated completion is pushed back to Aug. 29.
OMU Director of Production Brad Howton said the wet interior and dry interior portions of the tower are completed and all that’s left to finish is the exterior’s blasting and prime coat.
Howton also said that the project is significantly under budget after they “drastically overestimated” how much it would cost. Originally the project was expected to cost $900,000; however it is only expected to cost $366,000.
