ALAMOSA — The visual landscape of Main Street is going to look a little different soon, thanks to the installation of banners to be hung from the historic streetlamps. The final design for the banner was presented to city council last week, and it’s no exaggeration to say that it was received with great enthusiasm. 

Prior to council members, Casey McCoy’s design was presented to the Creative Arts District board whose members gave it the thumbs up. 

McCoy was commissioned by the city to do the design with inspiration, he said, coming from different places. He started with pictures off of Google and, fairly quickly, transitioned to looking at the photography of Patrick Myers, an employee who, until recently, worked for the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve where he was renowned for his photos. 

“Patrick posts his photos publicly, so I looked at them to get an idea of what colors people envision as colorful,” McCoy said. Other suggestions came to him more directly, including from Beth at Visit Alamosa who encouraged him to include flowers native to the Valley and a staff member from the city who suggested “a bee and sunflowers.”  

The rest just came from “hours and hours” spent on the design with special attention paid to the elk, which he said took a “very, very long” time. “Each hair on that elk is drawn separately.” When asked how much time was invested in the project, McCoy can’t even estimate but, guesses, 12-hour days for a solid month.   

“It takes a lot of time to do this well,” he says. 

McCoy’s talent, vision and attention to detail paid off. As Rachel James, director of Development Services, shared with city council members, “The banners were printed by a company in New York. A man with the company said he does a lot of banners, and this one was one of the most beautiful ones he’s seen.” 

This is not the first time banners have hung from streetlamps in downtown Alamosa. James told the Valley Courier that banners hung on the streetlamps for years, but they were “too small to see.” 

“At least four or five years ago,” the Main Street Advisory Committee set a goal to replace the current banners with something more vibrant and noticeable, an idea that she thinks originated with former board member Carol Mondragon. The idea kind of bounced around for a while after that. Finally, once city staff were directed to take on the project, progress really picked up.  

“By ‘city staff’, we basically mean Beata Ramza,” James says. “She’s really the person who always takes on projects like these and gets them done.” James added that staff even printed a mock-up of the banner and attached them to the streetlamps to make sure the banner would not be too large or too small. 

It’s not known exactly when the banners will be installed as new hardware adapted for the streetlamp had to be purchased and needs to be installed, as well.  But this banner is also not the only one that will be on display. With money that was left over for the project, McCoy has been commissioned to design a second banner, one that, he says, also includes the Sand Dunes but, this time, focuses on “Dark Sky”. 

McCoy was just recently hired to do a banner for the Community Resources and Housing Development Corporation, a different one Manassa Pioneer Days and a banner done in memory of Bob Phillips, a much beloved and talented local musician. A musician himself, this project holds special meaning for McCoy and t-shirts of Pioneer Days will be on sale, with part of the proceeds going to Phillips’ family. 

For more information, go to McCoy’s website at https://caseymccoyarts.com.  

Anyone interested in seeing Patrick Myers’ stunning photography that, fortunately, continues to be online can do so by going to www.nps.gov/grsa/planyourvisit/photography.htm.