The Hall of Fame project was launched on 1 March 1999 for a one-year trial period. The locality where the Hall of Fame is located suffered from extensive graffiti, including on the walls and buildings of local retailers and other businesses. The project was developed in response to the recommendation made by the study 'While you sleep: an urban ethnographic study of graffiti' by Duijs and Ermers. That study was commissioned by Utrecht Council, the local HALT Bureau and the Utrecht police as an initiative to identify new approaches to tackling graffiti in the city. It recommended that, in addition to the enforcement measures introduced in 1996 for tackling graffiti and vandalism in Utrecht, there should be a preventive approach with the development of a 'Hall of Fame'.
The aim of this preventive approach was to prevent illegal graffiti by offering a location where young people would be allowed to spray paint. There were already similar projects in the Netherlands with, for example, sites developed in Rotterdam and The Hague. However, the Hall of Fame in Utrecht was said to be different from these others because it was developed with the active involvement of local writers, especially one highly regarded within the local graffiti subculture.