Sign Productions breaks ground for new home

Having all your employees under one roof has its advantages.

With that in mind, Sign Productions has broken ground on a new 83,000-square-foot building on Walford Road SW where it crosses under Interstate 380. It will replace multiple leased facilities in Marion since most of the company's offices and one of its three manufacturing plants at 1010 First St. NW were destroyed by the June 2008 flood.

Sign Productions, which became a 100 percent employee-owned company in September 2007, designs, manufactures and installs custom architectural and way-finding signs for customers throughout the United States.

Since the flood, its offices have been located at 3335 Seventh Ave. in Marion.

Sign Productions, with 85 employees, also operates its Grant Sign Division from a manufacturing facility in Madison, Wis.

“Our employees-owners and many of our partners throughout the Corridor, have worked extremely hard to make this new building and our flood recovery project possible,” said Andy Meyer, president of Sign Productions.

“We're running out of three facilities in Marion right now. We have design and sales separate from fabrication and it makes it very hard for everyone to communicate clearly.

“When our building is completed, everybody in Iowa will be operating under the same roof and that will be a real plus.”

Primus Construction is the general contractor for the Sign Productions project, which is targeted for completion next summer.

Meyer said nearly all of the subcontracting work will be handled by Eastern Iowa companies.

Despite the impact of the 2008 flood, Meyer said Sign Productions has grown to become one of the Midwest's largest sign companies over the past 25 years.

It serves a variety of markets including retail, health care, financial institutions, casinos and restaurants.

“We were very fortunate. We had a couple of really nice contracts with some large national clients that were multiyear accounts that took us through the thin period,” Meyer said.