Old Tennessee sign off for restoration

— An icon of Knoxville’s skyline, a JFG coffee sign that has stood for generations at the Gay Street Bridge, has been removed and needs a new home after it is refurbished.

The rusty sign with 14-foot-tall letters and hundreds of light bulb sockets was dismantled and loaded on flatbed trailers last week for a trip to a Charlotte, N.C., workshop.

It will be returned to Knoxville in early 2011, and preservationists are helping find a new spot to put it.

The director of preservation group Knox Heritage, Kim Trent, told the Knoxville News-Sentinel that suggestions on the sign’s new location are welcome.

JFG’s parent company, Reily Foods, is paying to have the sign, one of three left in the South, refurbished. Sign-Art is rewiring, repainting and repairing it. Birds and waspshave nested through the years in loose, rust-damaged sections of the 50-plus-year-old sign. Some bulb sockets and neon don’t work.

New Orleans-based Reily Foods doesn’t own the sign’s South Knoxville property and the lease has expired. The landowner, businessman Bill Baxter, plans to develop the property. Knox Heritage is selling the 40-watt light bulbs for $10 each to benefit a regional sign preservation program, the “Save Our Signs-Knoxville” fund, a program JFG helped start.

Front Section, Pages 3 on 10/25/2010

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