Aurora community members are leading a push to restore the Northgate Shopping Center’s historic sign, which has long been recognized as a local landmark by the city.
Constructed in the 1950s, the Northgate sign attracted cars to the shopping center for decades with its neon glow. But for a while now, the sign has been in a state of disrepair: it no longer lights up, and the base is rusted.
Tracy Duran, a self-taught historical researcher of Aurora, spent years seeing people post on city-focused social media pages about the sign. They’d share photos and their memories of it, but they’d also say that someone should do something to get it fixed up.
“I always felt the same way, but after a while it became frustrating seeing no one step up, so I decided to take that step myself and become an advocate for preserving the sign,” Duran said.
Now, she and George Gutierrez are making significant strides towards the sign’s restoration — although it is still far from a done deal. In the last couple months, they’ve met with the property owner, talked with the city and asked sign companies to give them cost estimates.
There’s been a particular urgency lately, said Gutierrez, because the base of the sign is rusting and deteriorating.
Specifically, the Northgate Sign Restoration Project is looking to raise funds, from the community and through grants, to hire a company to fix the sign’s various issues. In addition to structural problems, the sign will also be relit, possibly with LED lights designed to mimic the original neon.
The Northgate Shopping Center’s sign, located at 900 N. Lake St., is a large painted metal structure with a neon “S” tipped with stars wrapped around block letters that spell “Northgate.” The “S” stood for the name Stoner, past Beacon-News articles note, after the shopping center’s founder Harry Stoner.
Northgate was the first real shopping center in the area, and it played a key role in retail development in Aurora, according to past Beacon-News reporting. After its opening, businesses began to flow out of downtown to Lake Street.
Duran and Gutierrez both grew up in Aurora and saw the sign lit up when they were younger, they said.
Gutierrez noted the sign’s historical relevance and said that, if revitalized, it could bring more people and businesses back to the area. Plus, it could help identify Aurora as people drive in from the north, as the shopping center’s name suggests, he said.
The effort will also send a message to the area that it matters, according to Duran. Some people in the neighborhood see the sign as a blight, she said, but if restored it could bring the community together in a positive way.
Beyond Duran and Gutierrez, who are at the center of the effort, the Northgate Sign Restoration Project appears to have the support of many others in the community, too. Its Facebook page has over 1,000 followers, and an online petition calling for the sign to be restored has over 2,500 signatures on Change.org.
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The comments of many Facebook posts on the page are full of people sharing their own memories of the sign. Many recalled shopping at stores and eating at restaurants now long closed, while others talked about coming back to Aurora and seeing the sign as proof that they were home.
The first posts on the Facebook page are from 2024, but talk of revitalizing the sign goes back much further.
The Stoner family sold the shopping mall in 1998, and a year later, its new owners told The Beacon-News that they had plans to restore the sign.
The issue has also come up during city elections over the past several years. Matthew Orr, who was running against Ald. Mike Saville for the 6th Ward seat on the Aurora City Council, pushed for the sign’s revitalization during his campaigns in 2019 and in 2023.
But now, instead of coming from the property owners or city government, the Northgate Sign Restoration Project is looking to get funding from the community. Already the group has held fundraisers, notably by partnering with DB Woodworks to create small-scale wooden replicas of the sign for sale, with some of the proceeds going towards the project.
Aurora could get involved in the effort, though. Mayor John Laesch said that, although discussions are still in their early stages, the property owner has seemed interested in working with the city or a nonprofit to get the sign lit back up, and also possibly donating the sign to the city.
Any changes made to the sign would need to be approved by the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, according to Aurora Senior Planner Jill Morgan. That’s because the sign has been designated by the city as an official Local Landmark, she said.
The commission was given a presentation on the project this month, and Duran said that the members seemed to get behind the plan.
The Aurora Historical Society is also in talks to support the project in some way, but Executive Director John Jaros said that discussions are still in the very early stages, and that there are many details to work out.
There’s a lot of interest in the community for this project, Jaros said, and the Historical Society wants to be a part of it.
So, now, Duran and Gutierrez wait to hear back from the three sign companies that have surveyed the sign. Those quotes haven’t come back yet, Duran said, and it was hard for her to even give a cost estimate considering the foundation and base need work, too.
The project’s next step, she said, is to establish a bank account so they can collect donations. Plus, they are searching for grants that could also help fund the project.
Based on the enthusiasm about the project, both from within Aurora and beyond, Duran feels like they will be getting a good many donations once they have a way to accept them.