It’s not a bad idea, of course, to air on the side of caution when it comes to street lighting systems such as commercial luminaires and decorative lamp posts and signage systems such as traffic signs and custom aluminum street signs. And here at Brandon Industries, we take pride in providing communities with reliable, top-quality streetscape products at affordable prices.

But careful, accurate streetscape installations can save your community a bit of money that can be used elsewhere (say, on attractive courtyard lighting for a park or community space) — without sacrificing safety.

Our streetscape experts can help.

For example, how can your community decide exactly how many street lights (and what type of street lamps) are needed to keep your streets safe for pedestrians and drivers alike — without going overboard and ordering and installing extra lights that don’t actually enhance lighting coverage or aesthetic appeal. Each community has unique needs concerning streetlights, depending upon the landscape of the neighborhood and specific traffic patterns. So each community will require a unique streetscape solution.

Or, for another example, your community’s wayfinding sign needs and traffic sign needs will depend specifically on both local and state laws and regulations.

Here at Brandon Industries, we’ve been serving the streetscape needs of neighborhoods nationwide for nearly 25 years. So we have a highly refined, unmatched understanding of what is needed in most streetscape installations. But beyond our own experience and expertise, we also know when to ask for help — and when outside experts are needed (such as a local lighting engineer, city government officials or neighborhood association representatives). We can tell you who you need to check with concerning different installations, as well as how to find them.

But the first step is simply to contact us with any questions about what’s right for your neighborhood, business center, retail center, school, park or entertainment complex.

Christmas is over. New Year’s came and went with a last triumphant blow of the party horn. The peak of winter is likely just a few weeks away, which can only mean that… it’s time to start planning for summer now.

Okay — there’s no real hurry. But summer comes quickly, and you’ll want to be ready with streetscape projects completed when it does. Here are two reasons to start planning for summer early:

residential streetscape

Summer Home Shopping

Spring is home-shopping season and summer is home-buying season. The housing market is historically buyer-friendly, which means that communities are still likely in competition mode when it comes to attracting new families to their neighborhoods. When home-buyers make a decision, they don’t just purchase a house — they “purchase” the neighborhood. Finding a safe, walkable, attractive neighborhood that fosters a robust sense of community spirit can be just as important as square footage and a desirable floorplan in the home-buying decision.

Our streetscape solutions are excellent for making a striking first impression with potential home-buyers. For example, our custom wayfinding signs “welcome” shoppers and demonstrate a commitment to excellence and class. Our street lighting systems and street signs demonstrate a determined devotion to safety that shoppers crave for their children. Our custom logo signs add a sense of distinct community identity. And our decorative mailboxes can add a bit of nostalgic, old-world charm that can leave a lasting impression.

Outdoors

Longer days mean more time spent outdoors, and summer school vacations mean outdoor playtime often extends past twilight. We all want our kids to be able to play in the streets, explore neighborhood parks, and walk to school safely. That’s why most families move to neighborhoods like the ones we serve. Our streetscape solutions such as outdoor lighting systems and traffic signs can help maintain a safe, care-free environment for your community’s kids.

It’s simply a wonderful time of year here in Dallas-Ft. Worth. Here’s how just a few of our streetscape solutions can keep your neighborhood safe and celebrating:

1. Wayfinding signs — To help folks navigate shopping and entertainment centers and make the Christmas shopping rush that much less stressful. The last thing you’ll want to do is be lost and looking for a parking spot in front of the wrong store.
2. Decorative Streetlights and Lamp Posts — To keep streets illuminated, friendly, and safe for both residents and visitors, without resorting to a prison-like ultra-industrial look.
3. Traffic signs — To make sure drivers stop where they need to stop, allowing families of carolers to walk where they need to walk.
4. Decorative mailboxes — To receive Christmas cards with style and grace.
5. Locking mailboxes — To prevent Christmas gift theft (the most heinous of all crimes).
6. Custom shape aluminum street signs — To make sure that when you invite friends and family over for Christmas dinner parties, they’ll actually arrive before the eggnog is gone.
7. Custom logo signs — To help lost friends at least figure out what neighborhood they’re in.
8. Sidewalk lights — To keep the streets inviting and encourage families to come outside, stroll the neighborhood, look at Christmas lights, and sing through that caroling songbook.
9. HDPE and ACE signs – To make sure visitors feel welcome in your neighborhood (and understand your community’s rules).
10. Radar feedback signs — To remind drivers that the holiday season is a great time to slooooow down and relax a bit.
11. Courtyard lights — To make public spaces like parks accessible after dark, and to keep outdoor shopping centers open for last-minute gift scrambles.
12. Tough aluminum construction — To maintain reliability during an unexpected white Christmas.

When it comes to planned communities, the difference between those that bloom and those that just sort of blend into obscurity is in the details: Inviting parks. Safe streets. Excellent schools. A cohesive, community oriented vibe and spirit.

Here at Brandon Industries, we take the same approach, and believe our carefully constructed, intricately designed streetscape products can provide communities with the high-quality “details” needed to thrive.

Take a look at our line of outdoor street lamps. They’re tough, durable, and constructed from high-quality materials like cast-aluminum parts with a polyester powder coat finish, and — like community lighthouses — will keep your community safe and illuminated in even the most blinding storms. But they’re also stately, elegant, and attractive, and full of little details that demonstrate a commitment to excellence. For example, several models of our line of commercial luminaires feature sophisticated gold oval bands. Our line of stately courtyard lamps feature intricate details like bevel glass lenses. And our comprehensive catalog of commercial streetlamp posts include more than six models of posts, each carefully crafted to anchor your community’s outdoor lighting system with class.

Similarly, we’re proud to offer a diverse range of decorative mailboxes that are built from cast-aluminum, blend traditional casting methods with today’s technology, and are eager to be the first thing many folks notice about your home. But they’re also stylish and evoke nostalgic feelings of yesteryear. In fact, cohesively themed mailboxes are a great way for your neighborhood to demonstrate community solidarity.

Our custom signage systems are also exactly the sort of details that stand out to visitors and residents alike. Acting almost as “the handshake” of your neighborhood, these long-lasting signs both provide the details — driving directions, community information, etc. — that make visitors feel at home, and look impressive and classy while doing so.

For first-time visitors, an ornamental wayfinding sign is the handshake from your neighborhood. Attractive, stately, and durable, they welcome visitors with a spirit of helpfulness and warmth. They boast about the great things your community has to offer (Pool! Clubhouse! School! Golf! Parks!). They demonstrate a commitment to detail, cohesiveness, and class. And they help drivers get where they’re going more efficiently (which means safer, less congested streets for your kids).

Perhaps most importantly—now that the summer home-buying season is heating up and plenty of prospective home-buyers are dropping by—they help your neighborhood stand out from surrounding communities. A full palette of possible shapes and sizes are available. And we’ll work with you to find the right custom logo that fits the signs and successfully ties the neighborhood together with a common brand.

But beyond your neighborhood’s streets, our custom logo wayfinding signs can be useful for a host of other purposes, including:

• Navigating golf courses
• Keeping kids from getting lost on neighborhood trails and sidewalks
• Organizing parking at business centers and entertainment centers
• Cheerfully displaying rules, regulations, and community information
• Highlighting community perks (pools, community centers, tennis courts)
• Adding a sense of cohesiveness across the community

Similarly, in addition to wayfinding signs, the rest of our line of custom logo signs also come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes — each constructed from the highest quality of materials. These signs include:

• HDPE (high-density polyethylene) signs
• 18×24 ACP (aluminum composite panel) signs
• 22×30 ACP signs
• Custom aluminum street signs

In other words, we offer just about every type of streetscape sign your neighborhood could possibly need.

Long days, warm nights, and big parties — summer is coming. At Brandon Industries, we can help your neighborhood prepare. Here are just a few possible streetscape solutions you might want to start thinking about before the summer months arrive:

Schools Out: Time to Play

Kids will soon be out of school, and the last thing you’ll want is for them to spend the summer cooped up around a video game system. But for the kids to have a summer full of healthy, memorable days climbing trees, playing sports, and running around outside, safety must take top priority.

The most obvious safety threat is traffic, because drivers won’t always be driving as carefully and cautiously as they could be. In other words, you want people to drive through your neighborhood expecting kids to be chasing a soccer ball out into the street from time to time.

We can help you build a signage system that encourages safe driving, both through a full catalog of regulatory and traffic signs, custom signs (“Caution: Kids Playing”), and extra efforts like radar driver feedback signs.

Warm Nights, Fun Under the Lights

Days are (finally) stretching long past dinner time, and nighttime temps are approaching the summery balm we all know and love. Especially once daytime temps approach unbearable, folks are going to start spending more and more time outdoors at night.

Effective outdoor lighting— along walkways and around public areas, as well as streets—is critical to keeping things safe and fostering a sense of community by encouraging people to gather and play. And you don’t need to sacrifice aesthetic quality to do all this—our attractive luminaires and courtyard lamps are stately, elegant, tasteful, and cohesive.

Time to Party

Summer is the season of carnivals, festivals, farmers markets, golf outings, outdoor concerts, garage sales, and all around outdoor merriment. In other words, it’s the time when many communities hold big parties and events partially designed to invite in friends and neighbors from other parts of the city.

This means regular bursts of first-time visitors will be coming to your neighborhood, which means two things:

• An effective network of custom wayfinding signs is key to getting folks where they’re going quickly and easily, minimizing traffic and keeping the streets safe for your kids.
• Attractive, comprehensive streetscape solutions and touches like decorative mailboxes and custom logo signs that impress visitors, highlight your community’s commitment to detail and excellence, and solidify your neighborhood’s reputation as a desirable one (which will eventually be reflected in higher home values).

We provide communities with the choice of seven different decorative mailbox designs. Each stately. Each durable. Each featuring intricate, modern designs that evoke the casting methods of yesteryear.

And each of these designs do far more than collect your mail. They make subtle, but important statements about your community:

“We Care About Community”

Let’s think, for a second, about just what it is that house hunters crave in a community when looking for a new home: Charm. Community. Safety. Stable real estate values.

Obviously, custom mailboxes won’t achieve any of these factors on their own. But they do make up an important part of a neighborhood’s streetscape. And a uniform aesthetic helps bolster a cohesive community atmosphere, and it shows potential homeowners shopping in your area that your community is a robust, tight-knit one that looks out for each other.

Plus, with seven distinct designs available—in addition to a range of corresponding pole widths from 2 3/8 inches to 5 inches—homeowners can still choose which decorative mailbox best fits their home, without deviating too far from the desired neighborhood feel. Many are also offered with dual mounts, which makes it easy to create a unified look with neighbors.

“We Care About the Details”

In any neighborhood, it’s the details that really improve quality of life.

A custom decorative mailbox can give your home and collective streetscape one of the “finishing touches” that tell visitors and home shoppers that the little details matter. Any old box can probably collect your mail without problems, but your community cares about more than just simple utility. It wants to impress, to welcome, to be proud, and to stand out from surrounding neighborhoods.

For an example of the diversity of detail produced by our casts, check out our M1 “The Estate” mailbox model – an elegant, antique reproduction model that, depending on the finials and front mounts your choose, can be both dressed up or kept simple. A good example of our more traditional looks is M9 “The Estate” mailbox model.

“We Care About Quality”

At Brandon Industries, the decorative mailboxes we sell blend the aesthetics of yesteryear with the construction techniques, materials, and quality of today. Specifically, this means construction from either premium steel or heavy-duty cast aluminum (which we love because it’s lightweight, sturdy, and recyclable). A durable powder coat finish is added to prevent rust.

For your community, high-end, long-lasting pieces of your streetscape demonstrate a commitment to quality that goes far beyond streetscapes. Quality matters in home and community center construction, in infrastructure design, and in neighbor-to-neighbor relationships.

Contact our streetscape experts – we’ll help you get the comprehensive streetscape your community needs.

Our streetscape products won’t de-ice the Dallas streets, or say, keep an avalanche of snow from falling off Cowboys Stadium. But the street lights, street signs, and outdoor streetscapes we provide can help communities survive the cold just a little bit more easily.

The reason is fundamental—you can’t dictate the weather or stop chaos from pouring down from above. But with proper planning and preparation, you can bottle up that chaos, and make it manageable.

In other words, on normal, mild-weather, low-traffic days, any old streetscape, street sign, and outdoor lighting system will probably get the job done. But when things go wrong—from, say, a storm or power outage or traffic jam—an effective, intuitive, reliable system that stands strong and tall amidst the chaos can make all the difference in the world.

Plan in advance for those days with our streetscapes, and you’ll have a reliable structure that will keep chaos in its place.

Here’s what we mean:

Reliability:

An effective system of outdoor street lights makes it easier to see dangers like ice patches and flooded dips in the road — assuming the lights are still  shining when chaos swirls.

At Brandon Industries, we use durable, high-quality aluminum to build most of our products (and a durable powder coat finish for extra strength and protection), and use long-lasting HID lighting in our street lamps. This means outdoor lamps won’t come tumbling down in a big storm, and lights will simply last longer than the industry average, making a burnout less likely to happen at the worst possible time.

Structure:

Our custom, decorative street signs won’t make driving on icy roads any easier. But a series of smart, catchy, effective wayfinding signs actually minimize traffic by making it easier for people to get where they’re going. The last thing you need in a storm is a bunch of visitors getting lost and sliding around your neighborhood. Furthermore, a catchy, visible stop sign that actually stops drivers is generally a smart idea in conditions where braking isn’t easy.

Every little bit helps, and confident drivers are safe drivers—especially when conditions are hazardous.

For health, wealth, and community growth, walkability matters. At least, that is, according to The Atlantic, who recently collated a flurry of studies and city rankings about the effects of pedestrian-friendly communities.

“The popularity of sprawling auto-dependent suburbs is waning. A majority of Americans–six in 10–say they would prefer to live in walkable neighborhoods, in both cities and suburbs, if they could. [...]  Christopher Leinberger has shown the positive effects of walkability in cities, towns, and suburbs; the architects Ellen Dunham Jones and June Williamson have detailed ways that older car-oriented suburbs can be retrofitted into more people-friendly, mixed-use, walkable communities. And walkability pays. According to research by Joe Cortright, housing prices have held up better in more walkable communities.”

According to the magazine, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Philadelphia earned the top spots as America’s most walkable cities. Texas cities like Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, on the other hand, didn’t do quite as well.

Now, obviously, more densely urbanized cities like New York and San Francisco will have higher walk scores due to increased need to invest in pedestrian-friendly infrastructure than more sprawling, car-necessary cities like Dallas and Houston. But as many recent mixed-use developments in the Dallas area have shown, low city-wide scores don’t prevent individual neighborhoods—whether urban, suburban, or rural—from developing the safe, inviting pedestrian-friendly environments that homebuyers crave. Suburban-heavy cities with high walk scores like Denver, Portland, Los Angeles prove it.

And in either environment, effective signage systems matters. If your community is in an urban environment, parking difficulties, heavy traffic, and increased access to public transportation will make walking much more of a convenience and necessity—and those same contributing factors make accidents more likely as well. For suburban or rural neighborhoods, folks usually need to walk further to get where they’re going, traffic tends to move at higher speeds, and there’s less lighting from dense city blocks—all challenges that can be helped by a well-designed signage system and (at night) network of attractive, coordinated street lights.

Walkable communities tend to have healthy kids and community-oriented populations—a combination reflected in the home values of pedestrian-friendly developments. From another study we quoted a few months ago:

“More than just a pleasant amenity, the walkability of cities translates directly into increases in home values. Homes located in more walkable neighborhoods—those with a mix of common daily shopping and social destinations within a short distance—command a price premium over otherwise similar homes in less walkable areas. Houses with the above- average levels of walkability command a premium of about $4,000 to $34,000 over houses with just average levels of walkability in the typical metropolitan areas studied.”

So here’s the bottom line:

Street signs and outdoor lighting systems keep pedestrians safe and healthy. Pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods relish from higher home values. Our streetscapes, street signs and outdoor lighting systems can make it all happen—no matter where in the city your community is located.

We’d love to help make your community pedestrian-friendly. Contact our Dallas streetscape and street signs experts for more information.

• Traffic Decongestant

If drivers can get where they’re going more quickly, and not spend even that extra few minutes circling around like vultures looking for an optimal parking spot, traffic congestion will clear up considerably. And fewer cars crawling around means less risk of a safety incident—whether in a shopping center, a downtown culture and entertainment district, a business park, or a neighborhood full of kids

Furthermore, if a customer’s first memory about a particular shopping center is how hurried and harried they were after having to fight through the crowds of cars, they’ll be much less likely to return in the future. A more pleasant and satisfactory overall experience will plant a positive memory in shoppers’ minds, making them more eager to come back and browse.

• Business Booster

Shoppers usually come to a center with one specific store in mind. But one great advantage of clumping a bunch of stores together is the ability to tap into that “impulse buy” (or at least “impulse browse”) factor. Even if customers look to wayfinding signs primarily to, well, find their way to where they originally planned to go, attractive wayfinding signs can be used as subtle advertisements for the other stores in a complex.

• Community Creator

What do a book store, a hair salon, and a Thai restaurant really have in common? A system of attractive, coherent wayfinding signs takes a disparate collection of locations and unites them beneath a cohesive sense of place.
A group of pet stores, sandwich stops, and bridal boutiques suddenly becomes a shopping center. Two museums, and urban park, and a row of cafes, art galleries and nightclubs become an “entertainment district.” A street full of random buildings that have been around since the first Roosevelt administration becomes a “historic byway.” These sorts of communities tend to invite shoppers and visitors to come and explore (rather than just head to one specific location), benefiting everyone there.

At Brandon Industries, we offer a full catalog of stately, effective wayfinding signs. Contact one our Dallas streetscape experts for more information.