Waco and ALICO rhyme: Visitors take notice

If Waco, Texas, expects to be in the running to be the prime location for the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, it needs to start beating its chest as a genuine tourism destination.

 

The Magnolia brand, created by contemporary fixer uppers, community saviors and television celebrities Chip and Joanna Gaines, is a great hook…but there has to be more curb appeal. Introducing the ALICO Building. 

The first skyscraper built west of the Mississippi River, the ALICO Building is an impressive, 22-story structure in downtown Waco. The 282-foot tall building was completed in 1911 and became the headquarters of the Amicable Life Insurance Company (ALICO) of Texas.

 

In 1965, Amicable Life Insurance Company and American Life Insurance Company merged to become the American-Amicable Life Insurance Company. In 1966, the company added a large neon sign at the top of the building displaying the original acronym ALICO (rather than the stutteringly AALICO). 

Bill Teeter, a reporter at the Waco Tribune-Herald, recently went up on the roof of the ALICO Building with Rick Rainer, who was dispatched to perform maintenance on the electrical transformers that power the giant letter “A.” 

Residents had reported that the sign was illuminating as LICO. (Thankfully, any given outage combination does not inadvertently spell an off-color word.)

 

Megan Gilmore, a local Waco advertising executive, shouts from the rooftop.

Rainer, a technician with Jackson Sign & Lighting Inc., says he “climbs over the building’s edge about once a month to keep the sign fully lit.” Servicing the five-letter sign brings in about $6,000 in revenue per year to the sign company.

“With its 20-foot-tall letters, the sign has been a sentinel, glowing above the city’s night skyline – a signature for Waco,” Teeter reported. 

Phil Jackson, owner of sign company, told Teeter that the ALICO sign contains dozens of red neon tubes that measure 90 to 95 inches and are mounted on the red-painted letters. He said each letter contains multiple transformers. The challenge is that technicians cannot reach the top of the roof with a lift or bucket truck.

 

The only access to the sign is from the rooftop. Teeter said: “Rainer must tie himself to the structure with a safety harness and cling to trusses. 

“You wrap your leg around something, hold on with one hand and work with the other,” Rainer said. (The proud…the few: those who dare to dangle in thin air.) 

In 2010, American-Amicable Life Insurance Company was acquired by Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services, Inc., based in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The company refers to itself as iA Financial Group. The community of Waco thanked the new owners for not changing or removing the sign. 

Students on campus at Baylor University in Waco, a mere mile away from the ALICO Building, have a special affinity for the ALICO nightlight, a beacon that is always welcoming.

 

In 2005, Palmer Hestley, a reporter for The Baylor Lariat, wrote: “The ALICO Building has been watching over Waco, guiding Baylor students home for almost a century.” It stands “elegant and strong” with the “bright red A-L-I-C-O shining brilliantly. Waco…can always look up and see where its heart and soul lies.” 

Visitors can also enjoy Waco’s Cameron Park, one of the largest municipal parks in Texas, encompassing 416 acres along the banks and bluffs of the Brazos and Bosque rivers.

 

Visit Lovers’ Leap, with a 370-foot drop from the white limestone cliffs, which is haunted by the legend of Waco tribe Princess Wah-Wah-Tee plunging with her lover, a brave from the nearby Tawakoni tribe, ending their lives but beginning the eternal union of their spirits.