The 40-foot-tall iconic Forum sign that sits atop the building's downtown Fargo headquarters was carefully taken down by industrial cranes on Monday. The 60-plus-year-old iconic sign will be refurbished and placed back on the newspaper's roof.
FARGO – The iconic “Forum” sign was removed from the downtown building Monday afternoon, but it will soon be back – and brighter than ever.
Building Manager Dave Shasky said the sign will be refurbished locally, and he expects it to return in about a month.
The pillar sign has been a fixture in downtown Fargo for more than six decades, illuminating the headquarters of Forum Communications Co., publisher of North Dakota’s largest newspaper, The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
The white skin, or background, of the sign will be refinished, and the lights will change from fiber-optic to LED lighting, Shasky said.
This will not be the first time the sign has been refurbished. Shasky said the sign was first changed from neon lighting to fiber optics in the late-1990s.
“The fiber optics haven’t worked out where they’re bright enough,” he said. “You can only see them from two to three blocks away. The LEDs are supposed to be really bright lights so you can see it from a farther distance and there is less maintenance on it.”
Shasky said a date of 1946 was found inside the sign, and he estimated the sign was installed around that time.
A two-story building for The Forum was first built between 1927 and 1928. The third, fourth and fifth floors were added in 1935.
The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead is owned by Forum Communications Co., a multimedia company headquartered in Fargo, N.D. The company publishes nine daily newspapers and 24 other newspapers in Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and South Dakota. The company also has television, interactive and printing divisions.
The Forum sign is loaded on a flatbed truck to be be hauled away and refurbished. The sign has sat atop the newspaper's downtown Fargo building since the 1940s.
Very cool sign. It’s great to see a company preserving its history.