Frankenmuth Gateway Arch

This is a Highway Sign welcoming visitor to the popular city of Frankenmuth, Michigan where it is Christmas year round. This highway sign started to be an archway over the freeway. Once the Architect and the City got involved this became quite an advertisement for this popular tourist spot in Michigan.

This was a very difficult piece to design, and install as galvanizing was speculated to be impossible. The State realized the cost of having to maintain this structure in the future. This was very difficult section and multiple progressive dips and weekends were involved to achieve success for such a challenging but worthwhile project.

They liked the longevity promised to them with the Duplex System of HDG and an Epoxy/Urethane top coating of paint. They were also very happy with the economical savings of a Galvanized based Duplex System as compared to having to blast and try to coat a inorganic zinc, epoxy, urethane, paint system. The size also limited who could dip this piece but really there were no paint facilities large enough to correctly blast and paint the arches with MDOT approval, as did the Galvanizer that was selected.