What’s your story, Peekskill?

With new logo in the works, the city seeks a brand new look to boost tourism and economic development

A graphically ornate metal sign greets one and all at Metro-North’s Peekskill train station by the riverfront.

By Eric Harvey, [email protected]

April 21, 2025

The City of Peekskill says it is looking to boost tourism and build economic development with a new logo and brand.

Trajectory Brands Inc., a Toronto firm, was approved on Jan. 27 by the Common Council to design a new logo and brand as part of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) state grant awarded Peekskill in August 2019. A formal contract with Trajectory was executed in mid-March.

Marketing materials by Trajectory Brands for Dupont Circle. (Trajectory Brands)

Jeannette Hanna, Trajectory’s chief strategist, told the Peekskill Herald on April 11 that in addition to working on the logo, its mission is to tell a story that builds local pride and answers the question, “Why go to Peekskill?”

“Peekskill is a very creative city,” Hanna said. “It’s got great arts and culture, and there’s so much potential to draw forward, but our job is to kind of be the mirror back to the city of what it feels is important.”

Trajectory Brands Chief Strategist Jeannette Hanna.
(Trajectory Brands, Inc.)

Peekskill Director of Planning Carol Samol told the Herald that the marketing efforts started several weeks ago and is intended to be a four-month engagement process, with a summer reveal.

“I don’t think Peekskill’s ever had a logo other than the city seal,” Samol said. “We’re looking to identify a visual identity and brand that we can use to attract visitors and businesses, and sell the city, make people proud of where they live – just a point of civic pride – and otherwise encourage investment.”

Samol noted that the City of Peekskill seal is not going anywhere and the city is envisioning it could still be used on formal documents and licenses.

“Peekskill has a long history,” Samol said. “It is an art town. It is diverse. It is growing, surrounded by beautiful nature. And so it’s got a lot of things to lean into as a city, to set itself apart from its competitors and for the people that live here to be proud of.”

Director of Planning Carol Samol at a City of Peekskill presentation on March 6, 2025. (City of Peekskill)

In a press release, Mayor Vivian McKenzie said a fresh logo and brand reflecting the city’s history and vitality will help to tell the city’s story and attract visitors and residents.

“Now is the time to build a powerful brand for ourselves,” McKenzie said. “We are seeing revitalization and investment across the city that builds on major support from New York State. We want our progress to continue and to expand Peekskill’s attractiveness as a destination.”

From one marketing firm to the next

The city in 2023 hired Weinrib & Connor, an advertising and marketing agency in Mount Kisco, to design the city’s logo and branding.

However, after several months of work, the city terminated the contract in 2024 due to dissatisfaction with that agency’s marketing efforts and proposed logo.

“We found that they were not the right fit for what we wanted to achieve,” Samol said. “And so we decided to take a moment [and] reassess our needs.”

Weinrib & Connor was paid over $80,000, Samol said, for work that included creating several video interviews with residents and business owners; art and copy for a draft landing page; contact lists; a draft logo; research and strategy briefs; and other deliverables.

After putting out a new request for proposals in August 2024, the city received 96 submissions. Those were narrowed to 15 semi-finalists, then four finalists, for interviews and ranking.

Logo and marketing work Trajectory Brands has produced. (Trajectory Brands)

The selected firm, Trajectory Brands Inc., submitted the lowest bid of the finalists, $55,000, which covers its work as well as travel expenses. Its scope of work is considerably smaller than the previous agency’s, focusing first on a logo and brand rather than the actual implementation of the marketing. Samol said the city hopes to find another firm later that specializes in such work.

City Manager Matthew Alexander said the city selected Trajectory “because they articulated a defined public engagement process designed to bring in diverse community perspectives and opinions.”

Trajectory Brands says it has worked across North America with neighborhoods, Business improvement Districts (BIDs), municipalities, counties, regions, and development agencies, including in Minnesota, Vancouver Island, and Washington, D.C.’s Congress Heights, Dupont Circle and Capitol Hill areas.

So far, the agency has been meeting with the city on a biweekly basis. Trajectory’s staff of seven includes three designers, two strategists and administrative support, said Hanna.

“I grew up in Manhattan, so I was very familiar with Peekskill,” Hanna said. “[I] love the area, used to go to Bear Mountain on school trips and all of that. We’ll be there several times over the next six to eight weeks.”

Work for the logomark includes typography, color schemes, graphic devices, and a design “vocabulary” and messaging toolkit that the city can tailor to its needs.

“Sometimes it’s hard for people to see their place with fresh eyes,” Hanna said. “So that sense of helping people see, being able to play back attributes of their place in a way that feels fresh and authentic and distinct in some way, [is] part of the creative process.”

The impact a logo and marketing can have on a city

Having a brand can place a municipality on the map, Trajectory’s Jeannette Hanna said.

Among municipalities Trajectory Brands has worked with is Congress Heights, which Hanna described as a marginalized community within Washington, DC, and the home of the Washington Mystics, DC’s WNBA team (Women’s National Basketball Association).

That distinction aside, the neighborhood was not mentioned in the DC edition of Where Magazine and did not appear on the map of civic booster Destination DC’s website. It was as if the neighborhood didn’t exist or at least that there wasn’t a single reason to go there, she said.

Monica Ray, the founder of Congress Heights BID, told the Herald that, in 2015, she and several others in the Congress Heights Community Training & Development Corporation sought to establish a vibrant community and explored the creation of a BID. Around 2017, they invited Trajectory Brands to work on a brand to build that community.

Ray recalled the team holding six months of community meetings, conversations and interviews with stakeholders, telling “the most beautiful story” about the community. She said the brand took off faster than the community’s actual makeover, earning the envy of other communities whose residents wished they lived in Congress Heights instead.

Today, development in the area is at its highest ever, a dramatic turnaround from Congress Heights having been systemically disinvested and under-invested.

“Because of the strong brand that exists, I think our residents have begun to feel ownership,” Ray said. “And they’re prepared with the narrative and the storytelling to go out and advocate on behalf of the community.”

Working with the community organization, Trajectory was able to help bring “all sorts of investments into [Congress Heights],” Hanna said. They were able to go to local developers to advocate for investments in their community and have had millions of dollars of investments and community benefits come to the neighborhood.

“The mayor ended up coming to the neighborhood [after the marketing campaign proved successful] and said, ‘I’m so glad to be here in the soul of the city.’ It’s been really widely embraced,” Hanna said. “So that’s the kind of impact – not only a logo, but a proposition about we’re here, why choose here? Why be here? Why join us? It wasn’t just our work [that made a difference]. The community itself did all the hard work; we just captured their ambition.

“It really comes down to what do you want to tell the world about who you are and why you matter.”

City promises a collaborative process with public input

Trajectory is currently in its research and fact-finding phase. That involves looking at old plans and other documents that encapsulate the city’s history, as well as talking to people recommended by the city.

Those people include business owners; local artists and designers; people of multi-ethnic backgrounds; and members of the city’s BID, Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce, Peekskill City School District, Historic and Landmarks Preservation Board, and Common Council.

According to Samol, there are more than 50 people from across Peekskill slated to talk with or otherwise be engaged by Trajectory in the discovery phase of its work.

“What’s been great is that we’re hearing very consistent themes, which is always helpful,” Hanna said. “Because people have a lot of coherence around the things that people care about and the things [they] think are important and what they hope to share with people about where the city is going as a community.”

The public input is just getting started, said Hanna. The city plans on creating public surveys for people to weigh in as well as an advisory committee that reflects all walks of life and acts as a sounding board for Trajectory, Samol said.

The City of Peekskill has created a web page to share updates and collect feedback throughout the Trajectory marketing project. At this writing, no public surveys had been posted.

Asked how business owners or residents could be added to the list of people Trajectory is talking with, Carol Samol said they could reach out to her at City Hall.

About the Contributor

Eric Harvey, News Reporter

Eric Harvey has joined the staff of the Peekskill Herald as a full-time reporter covering a general assignment beat that includes the City of Peekskill and The Board of Education. Harvey, 24, of Stamford, C.T. was a politics and crime reporter most recently at the Bronx Riverdale Press where he was the recipient of a New York Press Association Better Newspaper Contest award for a 2023 feature story on the man who co-wrote Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech. A graduate of Champlain College in Vermont, Harvey said he likes working in community journalism because it allows for making a difference. “Peekskill is a beautiful and diverse city with rich story potential,” Harvey said. “I look forward to getting to know the community better and shine a spotlight on your needs and interests.”