Unlike Infamous 'Canoe Sign,' Artwork for Streetscape Project to Emphasize Simplicity, Nature

Bulldozers will give way to beautiful mosaic work and old-fashioned street lamps once the Streetscape Improvement Project is completed on Castro Valley Boulevard.

Residents' mostly negative feedback from a December survey about the infamous "canoe sign" sculpture, warehoused almost immediately after being installed in 1997, was passed on to Miriam Stahl, the Berkeley-based artist doing the for the new streetscape project.

Under the direction of the Alameda County Arts Commission, more than 1,000 people gave input to a seven-resident panel that chose Stahl's proposal, which from the start focused on Castro Valley's love of nature. Images in mosaic laid in granite seat boxes and gateway markers will include native plants, hillsides, canyons and community landmarks such as the Castro Valley Library.

"When I first started working on my proposal, I made multiple visits to Castro Valley and I was really struck by the beauty of the natural environment and the value that the community placed on preserving natural areas, and also the way that the community interacts with the library," Stahl said in a video that Alameda County produced about the artwork for the streetscape project.

The artwork is just a small fraction of the overall streetscape improvement plans but a touchy subject locally beause of the community's prior bad experience.

The "canoe sign," created in the late 1990s with apparently too little public input, resurfaced in public debate last fall after Castro Valley resident John Lindon suggested the county remove the $100,000 sculpture from storage and find a home for it.

In response, Alameda County surveyed 375 Casto Valley residents to understand current sentiment about the sculpture.

Those against reinstalling the sign outnumbered those in favor of finding a new place for it, but the split—56.4 percent against the sign and 43.6 percent in favor—was close enough that the Castro Valley Municipal Advisory Board has decided to keep the question open for future discussion.

The December survey also allowed residents to offer suggestions on what the sculpture should have been like, if it were to have accurately represented the community's identity.

The good news is that simplicity and images of nature were dominant in the survey results, and that's exactly what's proposed for the new streetscape.

A number of survey respondents also suggested the image of a because, in the first half of the 20th century, that was the area's main contribution to what was then still an agricultural economy. Castro Valley has since become a bedroom community where one of the most common professions is software engineer.

The chicken image also appears in a souvenir keychain that the Castro Valley/Eden Area Chamber of Commerce gives away at some of its events. 

Chickens are distinctly missing from the streetscape design, which emphasizes recreational rather than commercial use of nature, as reflected by images of bicycles, boats and children enjoying ice cream cones.

In the December survey, respondents also looked to natural surroundings as a possible new home for the old sculpture. Fifty-nine percent of those in favor of reinstallation gave a thumbs-up to locating it in Lake Chabot Regional Park. Seventy percent said yes to installing it along the road near the lake.

Sites that got the biggest opposition were in front of or .

Though not an option on the survey, many people wrote in a suggestion that the sculpture be donated to a local museum like the Hayward Area Historical Society.

These respondents saw the sculpture as more artwork than sign.

The sculpture’s artist, Washington state-based Sheila Klein, said something similar in a with Castro Valley Patch.

“Everyone calls it 'the sign,' but really it's a sculpture about a sign,” said Klein, “I wasn't hired to do a sign.”

Another reason for the museum suggestion was that it represented an episode in Castro Valley's history. Hundreds of people showed up at a MAC meeting in protest of the sign in 1997. 

MAC chairperson Cheryl Miraglia said the sculpture didn't get enough public input, even though public hearings were held. By contrast, the streetscape project was the subject of many Alameda County Arts Commission hearings that were better publicized.

Another hint of the community's preference for simplicity and nature—as opposed to the oversized letters in bright candy colors in the sculpture—is one respondent's reference to the child-like images at Children's Fairyland near Lake Merritt in Oakland. Another place with playful, exaggerated imagery—, Castro Valley's miniature golf park—also got write-in votes.