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Pacific commission begins Route 66 Centennial planning, seeks volunteers and sponsors
Summary
The Pacific Tourism Commission began planning for Route 66’s 2026 centennial, discussing events, photo-op installations, a barn‑quilt trail and sponsorship models; members noted state grant funding and MoDOT sign restrictions and set a community brainstorming meeting for August.
Pacific’s tourism commissioners opened a broad discussion about planning events and attractions to mark the Route 66 centennial and to encourage visitors to stay in town longer.
Commission members and attendees proposed a mix of ideas — from pop‑up festivals and oversized photo‑ops to a barn‑quilt trail and historical before‑and‑after photo sites — and invited residents and businesses to volunteer or pitch concepts. Speaker 5, who has been attending the Route 66 commission meetings, urged people to send ideas and offered regular monthly meetings as a working forum.
A speaker noted statewide support: "The state was given a million a little under $1,000,000, to for this year, for 2025, to help celebrate," and several commissioners discussed pursuing matching grants and grant opportunities for festival funding. Commission members also cautioned that some roadside signage is constrained: "it is a Modot road, so there's very specific things we cannot do on the road," a participant said, underscoring that some installations will need to be placed off the public right of way or as entrance features.
Members discussed banner and sponsorship models as an option to fund public displays. One idea was to sell banner space to local businesses, with the caveat that MoDOT allows business names on certain poles but not company logos; commissioners proposed rotating roughly half of the town’s 84 posts (about 42 at a time) as a way to balance visibility and cost.
The commission agreed to broaden public input: a member proposed a community brainstorming meeting (not strictly following the regular agenda), and the group confirmed the next regular meeting will be August 13 and discussed the option of moving that meeting to 3 p.m. to increase participation. Commissioners asked staff to produce a short fact sheet and to solicit volunteers to begin planning and staging small events in 2025 to build momentum for 2026.
The discussion was exploratory; no formal action was taken on specific Centennial projects during the meeting.
