When the city, as a backdrop for its Pan Am Games ceremonies, spelled out the name of this place in bright-coloured lights, it caught lightning in a bottle.

The temporary piece of festival décor became an immediate civic calling card — an Instagram celebrity landmark, a climbable self-describing icon, a way to easily mark occasions sad and joyous with a colour tribute. In the marketing-speak words of the city’s Andrew Weir, a point of “destination marketing” pride. According to economic development manager Mike Williams, “the most successful marketing media branding project that I’ve ever been involved with.”

So why are politicians currently balking at the less than half a million dollars it would cost to make that success permanent? It’s like throwing away a winning lottery ticket because you don’t want to pay the bus fare to cash it in.

Toronto may have more worthy landmarks (the CN Tower, Nathan Phillips Square), more ridiculous ones (Casa Loma), even more playful ones (the OCAD pencil-crayon tabletop). But it’s a fair bet it doesn’t, and won’t, have another that became so significant in the public mind so quickly and cost so little. Maybe it is because it was meant as a celebration, not a symbol.

Sometimes it’s like that: the Eiffel Tower was meant to be temporary, for the 1889 World’s Fair; the London Eye ferris wheel was meant to be a five-year attraction marking the millennium. Both have redefined their city’s skylines. Both remain in place.

Sometimes it even happens with place-name signs: the famous “HOLLYWOOD” sign began life (back when it read “HOLLYWOODLAND”) as an advertisement for a real estate development.

These things take on a life of their own.

And that life can pay dividends, as rallying points of pride for locals, magnets for visitors, symbols of a city that take on a place in the imaginations of both people who live there and people who don’t. As far as marketing goes, an iconic symbol that literally spells out the name of the place is about at good as it gets — especially when in the background you have the stunning architecture of Toronto City Hall.

But you have to allow these things to take on that life of their own — or to continue to enjoy that life. Paris has rebuilt the Eiffel Tower to preserve it; rounds of fundraising have been required to restore and preserve the Hollywood icon. Decades of engineering expertise and millions of dollars have gone into preserving the “lean” in the leaning tower of Pisa — another landmark whose fame came accidentally, but needed funding to preserve its accidental qualities.

Clearly this isn’t the most pressing or important or urgent issue in the city. We have people who are hungry, we have violence, we have traffic. The bulk of our resources, obviously, should go to dealing with those. But this is a no-brainer issue. Fun, playfulness, pride — these are also things worth encouraging in a city. And in the scale of the city’s budget, we’re talking about relative pocket change.

When we debate the subway or the Gardiner, we’re talking billions of dollars. When we talk about housing or road safety, we’re talking tens or hundreds of millions. This is a few hundred thousand.

Of all the clichés, the one that is most overused and misapplied by civic politicians is the one that says you need to watch the nickels and dimes and the dollars will take care of themselves. The truth is, even after years of watching — denying yourself vending machine candy, clipping coupons, using the sandpapery single-ply toilet paper — the nickels and dimes just pile up in bowls and piggy banks because you’re too lazy to roll them, and then after decades you finally count them up and see you have enough for a nice lunch. Meanwhile, the dollars didn’t take care of themselves, if you spent them on luxurious things you didn’t want or need.

Often, the nickel-and-dime simple pleasures are worth far more than the pennies they cost. And prudence approaching big-ticket items — mortgage rates, car models — is where you find meaningful dividends that help your financial stability.

We lucked out when the sign captured the fancy of visitors and locals alike, and became an unlikely symbol. Taking it down because we’re too cheap to maintain it would be another kind of symbol altogether — one that sadly wouldn’t feel as unlikely around here.

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In city budgeting terms, the TORONTO sign is a nickel-and-dime issue. But in its value — as a shameless marketing tool, a maker of occasional statements in Nathan Phillips Square, and as a source of giddy pride and joy for the people who see it and pose on it — it is worth a lot of dollars. Let’s spend a few to keep it around.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire

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