New Placencia Sign Nearing Completion

February 15, 2022
by Larry Waight +

Bursting with colors, vibrancy, and a glimpse of Belize’s rich biodiversity, the new Placencia sign that proudly topples on the northern end of the sleepy fishing village, is generating a significant amount of interest for tourists and locals, who have been flocking to the area to pose off for that flawless vacation picture with family, friends or love ones.

The new sign, though only nine letters long, and not yet completed, is the latest pride of the village, even more so since it was a collaboration between local artists, several businesses in the area, and even donors who all partnered to make the newest local landmark a reality. While the artists are still in the process of putting their last final touches in place, talks among locals are that they are already proud of the job so far since the mural is a perfect portrayal of the village and its history.

One of the organizers who we spoke to and who identified himself as Shane Kenny, the owner of the Placencia Beach Club told us that the group of companies who came together to finance the sign made a collective decision that it had to be something that would represent the village and so they agreed that one of the most effective ways of doing that was to meet with local artists from the village to put together a theme.

”We contacted the Placencia Seaside Painters Guild, which is a group of artists that collaborate together in the village. They got together and they decided what the painting was going to be and what the different letters were going to look like. We gave them complete autonomy to decide on all of that. The only thing we told them is that we wanted to do something that was really, really cool and really, really nice, not just the regular blue, red, green, and yellow, but we wanted to make sure that our sign really looked amazing and represented us.”

The initial preparation for the installation of the Placencia sign officially commenced in 2019, whereby the Belize Tourism Board had agreed that they were going to provide the funding for the project. However, when the pandemic hit in March of 2020, leading to a nationwide shutdown and local revenues trickled to a standstill, the BTB reportedly pulled the plug on the project due to a lack of finance.

After the economy rebounded and tourism returned, the Placencia business community decided that being among one of the main tourist attractions in the country, they needed a sign of their own. That led to a meeting in December of last year where they agreed to pool their resources together and start the construction of the sign. Those preparations were completed by the end of January and the actual painting of the mural commenced a week ago.

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”Tourists and locals love it, I mean even before we finished painting it, when it was still grey concrete they were already coming by to take pictures with it. Then it was white with the base coast and people were still coming to take pictures of it. While I don’t think that we will ever have 100 people lining up to take their pictures with the sign I think that it will become from a tourist perspective something that everyone will want to take their pictures with, ” said Kenny.

The sign is located on the north end of the village next to the Beach Club, who have agreed to donate their time and resources to keep the surrounding area clean so that persons who visit can have the best possible experience. Organizers say that the sign’s location was a strategy to boost tourism traffic through the village so that locals who sell their products on the sidewalk could take advantage of that.

Photo courtesy Kevin W Quischan