Staff file photo, 2020 / Ed Runyan ... Workers take down letters spelling out Home Savings on the west-facing side of the iconic downtown Youngstown building in July 2020 and later replaced it with signage for Premier Bank. A Youngstown board on Tuesday approved new signs for the financial institution’s new owners WesBanco. The tower will remain.

YOUNGSTOWN — With WesBanco Inc.’s acquisition of Premier Financial Corp., the former Home Savings and Loan Co.’s iconic downtown tower will undergo its second major change in five years.

The city’s design review committee on Tuesday approved a request from WesBanco to take down the Premier Bank logo and name signs on the tower — which went up in 2020 after a merger with Home Savings — and permit the installation of illuminating signs with the new bank logo and name.

The work will start shortly after May 19, said Jeff Prymas, vice president of Gardner Signs in Troy, Michigan, the same company that took down the Home Savings signs and installed Premier signs five years ago.

“They want to keep with the continued tradition of branding this iconic building,” Prymas told the committee Tuesday.

While the committee approved the tower signs, it postponed a vote on WesBanco’s request to change the entrance sign. Committee members said they didn’t want the proposed WesBanco entrance sign to be illuminated and some questioned the need for the company’s logo there.

Prymas said WesBanco would probably not have an issue with not lighting the entrance sign, but the logo is “important to their branding.”

The committee backed the plan to change the logos on the high-rise tower at the 275 W. Federal St. building.

The WesBanco logo and WesBanco text, measuring 35 feet, 8 inches wide and 5 feet, 5.5 inches high, will be installed on the tower’s north and south sides. The WesBanco logo, measuring 35 feet, 8 inches wide and 8 feet, 7.5 inches high, will be on the tower’s east and west sides.

The logos will be slightly smaller than the current Premier signs and logos on the tower at the 106-year-old building, Prymas said.

WesBanco, based in Wheeling, W.Va., completed its acquisition March 3 of Premier Financial Corp.

The holding company closing was followed by the merger of Premier’s subsidiary bank, Premier Bank, into WesBanco’s banking subsidiary, WesBanco Bank Inc.

The acquisition created an institution with $27 billion in assets and made it the 81st largest insured depository organization in the country and the eighth largest bank in Ohio.

WesBanco now serves customers through more than 250 financial centers and loan production offices in eight states.

Premier financial centers will continue operating under the Premier Bank name until mid-May.

In June 2020, First Federal Bank of Defiance and Home Savings Bank of Youngstown merged, creating Premier Bank. A project to put new Premier Bank signs on the downtown tower finished in December 2020.

Also Tuesday, the design review committee approved a 450-square-foot addition to the YMCA of Youngstown, 17 N. Champion St., to house electrical equipment.