Photo: Branding a new Belmont could be coming this year.

When you say “The Big Apple,” people immediately think of the cosmopolitan vibrance of New York City. Even most non-natives will recognize San Francisco’s iconic Golden State Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid gracing its new logo. And the symbol of neighboring Lexington is the historic image of the Minuteman statue by Henry H. Kitson.

So, what symbol, image, or saying makes you think “Belmont”? Unfortunately, nothing comes directly to mind other than cut-through traffic and wonky sidewalks. The current unofficial motto of “The Town of Homes” is viewed (especially by homeowners) as somewhat a curse as the bulk of the town’s revenue is generated from taxes on residential dwellings.

But the days of Belmont without a feel-good symbol or a catchy quip could be coming to an end as the Select Board appeared receptive to a plan that would eventually lead to the creation of the town’s own brand. The initial view of the town and the board was a branding campaign that included symbols, images, and a color scheme. This will assist Belmont as it projects a new identity.

“The concern I always had [since coming to Belmont in 2018] is nothing says ‘Belmont,'” Town Administrator Patrice Garvin told the Select Board.

“The concern I’ve always had is that nothing really says to a resident, ‘this is from the town,'” said Garvin. “There’s nothing [that is] uniform, be it business cards to pamphlets, postcards and forms on public hearings and the [town’s] website. It all should look similar.”

Many Bay State municipalities, including Winchester and Everett, have recently undergone branding campaigns. Needham had nearly a dozen separate images used by the library, schools, and several town departments when it began its branding exercise in 2023. By 2024, Needham approved a design featuring a copula with a weathervane, a popular architectural feature found throughout the city, as well as approving a yellow and blue color scheme – taken from the high school athletic teams – which will be used on vehicles, official documents, and correspondence. Needham paid $50,000 (half of the money coming from the city’s ARPA line item), which included revamping the problematic city’s seal.

In the past few months, Garvin has been in contact with Selbert Perkins Design, located on Leonard Street, to discuss the scope and action of a branding campaign. As part of a three-phase process, the initial work is to conduct an audit of all the images and signs used in the community.

An executive summary of the findings will follow the audit. From there, the board will decide if it wants “to take the next step and work on creating a more unified image, whether it be a logo or vision or image, or imagery of the town,” said Garvin.

After the audit, Garvin emphasized a very intense public phase.

“The public really does pick, ultimately, what the end product is,” said Garvin, as Selbert Perkins walked her through its work in Everett. ‘It was a lot of public discussion, taking all the ideas and filtering it up into two final schemes and then choosing one.”

As the town considers moving forward on branding, the Board of Library Trustees has engaged Selbert Perkins to help create a new brand that will coincide with the opening of the new library building in late 2025/early 2026. Garvin asked the design firm if it could “fit whatever the library is doing. They said they could,” Garvin told the board.

Not that Belmont is bereft of a strong icon – its own Marianne – to lean on in a future branding effort. The town’s seal features Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees, gardens, and orchards, which heralds back to the town’s history as a farming and market garden community. In 2022, the town came close to selecting a gardenia as a central figure in a rebranding plan. But that concept faded when it was discovered that while the flowering Rubiaceae was first germinated in Belmont, it a species that’s better suited in tropical climates.

But as with all projects, there is a cost. Garvin said the price tag for the initial audit is $18,000.

“We have money to do it in this year’s budget,” she said.

While the overall concept received a favorable vibe from the board, it also acknowledged that money could be an issue. Board Chair Elizabeth Dionne noted that “$18,000 may not seem like a lot, but for a town like us, it is.” She said she was “a little concerned about potential perceptions in the community around spending scarce dollars on this.”

“So I think we need to have a fairly concise argument as to why we’re doing it. I think we can make that, but I think we need to have [the discussion],” said Dionne, noting that “I’m open to the idea.”

A positive argument for Dionne was as the town is positioning itself to be more business-friendly and have at least some modicum of commercial development, “I’d like to project an image of a town that is sufficiently coordinated and organized that it does have a unified image, that our image does matter when we’re trying to present ourselves to potential partners.”

The next step is for Selbert Perkins to appear before the board in the next few weeks to present its model, a time frame, and the project’s total cost.