An iconic sign in Rehoboth Beach may soon move to a new location.
The iconic Dolle’s Candyland sign at the end of Rehoboth Avenue has welcomed visitors in Rehoboth Beach since the early 1960’s.
But its fate has been up in the air since Grotto Pizza bought the building this past summer.
Dolle’s owner Tom Ibach offered to donate the sign to the city in September, prompting Rehoboth Beach commissioners to debate the practicality of taking it. They sought a study examining the feasibility of placing it atop the Rehoboth Beach Museum.
But the museum’s board president David Mann says they prefer mounting it to the side of the Museum.
“We concluded that it would be unsafe and prohibitively expensive to put it on the roof," Mann said. "The roof consists of three sections. There’s a section that is over the Papa John Theatre, which is sloped from south to north and is extremely strong, but is on the wrong side of the building aesthetically.”
Mann notes that the west section of the roof is too fragile to hold the sign that weighs 3,640 pounds.
Mann told Commissioners during a workshop Monday they want to help, noting the sign’s importance to the city’s “brand.”
“If you get on the internet and you look at photographs of Rehoboth Beach, the Dolle’s sign is predominant in many of the photographs and pictures," said Mann. "Something as simple as the Dolle’s memorabilia display in Browseabout Books on Rehoboth Avenue, gives you a really good idea at how strongly people are attached to that sign.”
Mann says the museum is happy to place the sign on the side of its building.
He notes that Mayor Stan Mills is a strong proponent of that option, which he says would give the museum more notoriety and keep the iconic sign part of the city landscape.
Mann says a vote by the City Commissioners on what to do could come at their next scheduled meeting Friday, November 19.
