Billboards: LA Under Siege The Blight Fight By Dennis Hathaway
When the L.A. City Council voted in 2002 to ban new billboards and implement an inventory and inspection program to find and remove those that were put up illegally, a newspaper article quoted Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski as saying, “This is a historic day for Los Angeles. It is something whose time has come.”
Miscikowski has since left the council, and her assessment of a brave new future for sign regulation has proven to be hopelessly optimistic. By all informed estimates, there are more billboards and other forms of off-site advertising signs now than there were six years ago. And because the inventory and inspection program still hasn’t been implemented, billboards either erected or modified illegally—as many as one-third of the 11,000 or so in the city, according to a building department estimate—continue to generate profits for outdoor advertising companies who appear to regard the city’s visual landscape as a personal canvas to be plastered with commercial messages.
Who is to blame? The deep-pocketed outdoor advertising giants like Clear Channel and CBS who sued the city, claiming that banning new billboards was an infringement of their constitutional rights? Or the city, which settled those lawsuits on terms widely seen as a craven giveaway to the companies and a disaster for the cause of combating visual blight?
Regardless of how one chooses to answer the question, it is glaringly obvious that the city is under siege from outdoor advertising. Digital billboards with brilliantly-lit, rapidly-changing images are replacing conventional billboards on major thoroughfares. Multi-story fabric signs that wrap entire sides of buildings are going up, often overlooking freeways in blatant violation of city and state laws.
Smaller movie-poster style billboards, usually in groups of two or three, are sprouting everywhere.
Conventional, full-sized billboards have been erected, even though they were clearly banned by the 2002 ordinance.
Inspectors in the sign division of the Department of Building and Safety have been dutifully citing billboards and other signs that violate the 2002 ban and other sections of city ordinance, but their efforts have been thwarted by the propensity of the sign companies to file suit to stop enforcement actions. At a recent city council committee meeting, for example, a code enforcement official said there were at least 12 such lawsuits now pending against the city.
In the meantime, the multi-story “supergraphic” signs wrapping the walls of buildings go up without any inspections even though city ordinance has strict requirements to ensure that the material and the mode of installation meets fire safety standards.
The movie-poster style signs appear with electrical lighting even though the wiring has never been inspected and many of the signs are at sidewalk level. Full-sized, 60-foot high billboards appear without having undergone any structural review or inspection.
Fighting this onslaught might seem like a quixotic endeavor, but some recent victories have been won. An attempt to put up a huge video billboard on the side of the Korean Consulate building on Wilshire Blvd. was defeated even though it was endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the councilman of the district, Herb Wesson.
A 120-foot long vinyl sign advertising Toyota cars that was stretched across a building in full view of beachgoers in Venice was finally removed after a year-long battle.
A proposal to establish a sign district to allow digital billboards in an MTA bus year alongside the 10 freeway downtown was rejected by the city planning commission after an outpouring of public opposition, although it could still be revived by the city council. And the city’s Board of Building and Safety Commissioners has been consistently turning down appeals by owners of illegal signs that have been cited by inspectors.
Digital billboards, which have been the subject of numerous complaints due to their brightness that spills into residential neighborhoods and their constantly changing images that can distract drivers, have also been challenged on environmental grounds because they consume far more energy than conventional billboards. A study by a chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council has found, for example, that the “carbon” consumption of one digital billboard is 49 times that of a conventional billboard, or the equivalent energy use of 13 average homes. Since the city’s lawsuit settlement with Clear Channel and CBS allows the company to convert up to 840 billboards to digital, the potential increase in energy consumption is equal to more than 10,000 homes.
How has the city, which is currently considering a “green” building ordinance, addressed this issue? By giving billboard companies a categorical exemption from any requirement for environmental review, on the grounds that the conversion of a conventional billboard to digital is a “minor” modification. Imagine a 10,000 home development being exempted from any requirement for an environmental impact review, and the absurdity of this situation becomes starkly clear.
The Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight (CBBB) a recently incorporated non-profit organization, has appealed a city planning department approval of just such a conversion of a billboard on Ventura Blvd., citing the need for an environmental impact review, among other things.
This organization is also working to enlist neighborhood councils throughout the city to help make a stand against outdoor advertising companies that have been running roughshod over a city council that appears unwilling to make a stand in favor of preserving the city’s visual landscape.
To join in this effort, and receive updates on billboard issues and public action alerts, contact CBBB at cbbbla@verizon.net. This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
(Dennis Hathaway is a community activist and a political observer. Hathaway is a member of the Venice Neighborhood Council Land Use and Planning Committee and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)
Miscikowski has since left the council, and her assessment of a brave new future for sign regulation has proven to be hopelessly optimistic. By all informed estimates, there are more billboards and other forms of off-site advertising signs now than there were six years ago. And because the inventory and inspection program still hasn’t been implemented, billboards either erected or modified illegally—as many as one-third of the 11,000 or so in the city, according to a building department estimate—continue to generate profits for outdoor advertising companies who appear to regard the city’s visual landscape as a personal canvas to be plastered with commercial messages.
