Talk about getting your work onto the big stage. Springfield’s Ace Sign Co. worked in semisecrecy for several months fabricating 9-foot-tall, 38-foot-wide, aluminum and acrylic XLVIII Roman numerals that highlight Super Bowl Boulevard in New York.

Talk about getting your work onto the big stage.

Springfield’s Ace Sign Co. worked in semisecrecy for several months fabricating the 9-foot-tall, 38-foot-wide, aluminum and acrylic XLVIII Roman numerals that highlight Super Bowl Boulevard, the 13-block-long, football-themed street carnival that will entertain Super Bowl XLVIII (that’s 48 to most of us) visitors in New York’s Times Square this weekend.

The football game itself will be played in New Jersey, but New York lays claim to the accoutrements.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joined in the unveiling of the giant, lighted Roman numerals Wednesday night when Super Bowl Boulevard opened for its four-day run.

Organizers GMC and the Super Bowl Host Committee expect more than a million people to visit the boulevard by Sunday despite expected cold temperatures. And standing in front of the iconic numerals will be the place to be photographed.

“It’s only New York style to take it to that level,” said Todd Bringuet, one of seven family members employed at the family-owned business.

An intern with New York-based Production Resource Group, a worldwide entertainment technology company, called Ace’s Cory Boatman, another family member, about six months ago and asked only if Ace could fabricate letters for placement in the New York area.

“That was an immediate ‘yes’ because some of our national accounts are in New York and we ship there all the time,” said Boatman, the project manager.

Secret assignment

There were no details yet. Those would come over the next few months after a series of purposely vague emails.

Ace received an incomplete rendering containing only an X and a dimension.

“I asked for more information,” Boatman said. “The NFL hadn’t even decided on a logo yet and was leaning toward letters with light bulbs to resemble an old marquee look.”

The National Football League eventually submitted a drawing of what it wanted the numerals to look like, and Ace and Production Resource Group took it from there.

Boatman said they figured out what the numerals were for before PRG told them.

“They sent us the full layout of the numerals, and (employee) Brian Moulton said, ‘That’s 48, and that’s the number of the Super Bowl that’s being held in New York,’” Boatman said.

“After that we became very, very good in responding to their calls and emails,” he said.

“(PRG) did a search online for qualified vendors, and they saw some things on our website they liked,” Todd Brinquet said. “The need for privacy couldn’t allow them to tell us at that point what the job was for. At one time, we wondered how much investment should we put into this.”

Then they sent the drawing of XLVIII.

Sketches and whiteboard drawings were exchanged between Ace and PRG, and the actual design was agreed upon. Ace had to convert the design to a 3-D street version, more like a sculpture than a set of numbers.

“There was around 1 1/2 to two months of nothingness after concept approval,” said Scott Bringuet, who also worked on the project. “We probably spent under two months on the primary build.”

The gold-painted aluminum numerals have a ribbed appearance created by the channels that hold more than 4,000 DMX-controlled LED lights that can be set to music. Operators have control over individual numerals or areas of numerals. The face of each number is 1-inch-thick, multilayered acrylic, Todd said.

The ribbed design carries over onto the back of the numerals, although the lighting does not.

New York, N.Y.

When the numerals were shipped to New York on Jan. 14 by flatbed semitrailer, they had to be individually crated and concealed.

“It was a challenge that the public couldn’t see the project, although the project itself wasn’t a secret,” Todd said.

“The scope of the project wasn’t huge compared to some of the other projects we’ve done,” he said. “It was just the visibility of it.”

Super Bowl Boulevard includes a 60-foot toboggan ride (think state fair Giant Slide except with individual lanes), stages for concerts, autographs from former NFL greats, vendors and more.

“We helped take the engineering to the next level,” Scott said. “The V touches one-sixteenth of an inch on the ground, yet it has to be stable and stand up. They had a set of engineers go over our work. What we did with them secured their confidence in us.”

Ace Sign Co., founded in 1940, last year moved to a larger building, the former Sears warehouse at 2540 S. First St.

They said the company could have managed the Super Bowl Boulevard project at the old building on North Fourth Street, but it would have been a tight fit.

“Our reputation is important to us,” Todd said. “We’ve been doing more and more work outside the local area. This is a good portfolio piece and gives us a national presence.

“But we still feel strongly about our roots in Springfield, and the majority of what we do is still local,” he said.

Andrew Bartlett, national franchise sales representative for Ace Sign, took video of the entire process, then accompanied the letters to New York and will add the assembly and unveiling to a video that can be seen at www.facebook.com/AceSignCo.

Contact Chris Dettro: 788-1510, chris.dettro@sj-r.com, twitter.com/ChrisDettroSJR