Huge Signs! Electronic! Booming Popularity!--but Not at Del Amo : Torrance: Mall operators want to put up four street-side, light-festooned signs. But city officials have taken a dim view of the idea.

Promoters talk about it in superlatives.

Cutting edge, they call it. State-of-the-art. Eye-catching. Informative. Appealing.

The object of all those heady adjectives is the “electronic readerboard,” a light-festooned sign that has been springing up at banks, sports stadiums and shopping malls.

Not wanting to be left in the dark, Del Amo Fashion Center has proposed planting four of the high-tech signs around its borders in the heart of Torrance. And, in keeping with its status as the nation’s largest enclosed shopping mall, Del Amo hopes to install the largest readerboard yet seen in Torrance.

“We think we’re the No. 1 mall. We want to stay the best,” said Milan D. Smith Jr., an attorney representing Del Amo. “We just want to be on the cutting edge, and we think the city has a stake in that as well.”

So far, city officials have turned thumbs down on the project. The latest rejection came July 10, when the City Council voted 6 to 1 against Del Amo’s plans. But officials for both the city and the mall expect the issue to come up again.

Promoters and designers use glowing terms to describe the signs, but detractors see them in a different light.

“This is a monument to bad taste,” proclaimed Howard Sachar of Redondo Beach as he beseeched the Torrance City Council to reject Del Amo’s proposal.

“I’m really concerned about the gaudiness,” said Councilman Bill Applegate.

But Councilman Dan Walker, who provided the sole vote in favor of the Del Amo project, says he thinks the mall needs a major sign on Hawthorne Boulevard. “An electronic readerboard, if used properly, does provide good information,” he said.

The signs have been rising in recent years alongside shopping centers in the Los Angeles area and across the country. Mall owners spell out their messages--store hours, a special white sale--in letters made up of ever-changing constellations of light bulbs.

The computer-driven readerboards consist of light bulbs set in frames, like eggs in a carton. The average readerboard might have 2,500 bulbs.

A key item of dissent in Torrance is size.

The largest of the four proposed Del Amo signs would have been 336 square feet, with a readerboard area of 120 square feet. Although not considered large by industry standards, the sign would still have been the largest of its kind in Torrance.

It would stand 34 feet high alongside Hawthorne Boulevard, looking something like a square, cream-colored lollipop on a stick. Under the big red letters “Del Amo” would be the readerboard itself, a panel of bulbs and metal that would carry four lines of messages such as “350 shops, new hours.”

Smith argued before the council that Del Amo needs the signs to compete with other malls--for instance, with one of its chief rivals, the Galleria at South Bay, farther north on Hawthorne Boulevard in Redondo Beach.

Torrance would benefit in the process, he added. Community service messages could run on the signs. And, he said, “The city has a stake in the welfare of the mall.”

About 40% of the city’s sales tax revenue is generated by the mall, Smith said later.

Torrance council members remain unconvinced. Much of their criticism focused on the traffic effects of the largest sign, proposed for the east side of Hawthorne Boulevard, south of Carson Street.

“I don’t think a sign of that size and that glitter serves a useful purpose right out against the roadway,” Applegate said later.

“They’re very large, very garish, very overwhelming,” said Mayor Katy Geissert.

Sign promoters say no conclusive evidence has emerged that the signs are traffic hazards.

But city officials are concerned because the section of Hawthorne Boulevard that borders the mall already has more traffic accidents--160 collisions per mile in 1986, according to police statistics--than any other roadway in the city.

The four streets surrounding the mall produced a total of 133.7 collisions per mile that year, compared to a city average of 53.3, according to the figures provided to the council.

Lt. Dennis L. Frandsen, traffic division commander for the Torrance Police Department, said he is concerned that a large Del Amo sign could distract drivers.

“The purpose of the sign is to attract attention,” Frandsen said. “Things that are superfluous to the movement of traffic are only going to be a distraction.”

In addition, a report to the council warned that the signs could set a precedent in the city, proving attractive to businesses such as car dealerships, restaurants, theaters and florists, and adding a Las Vegas tinge to the streets.

Indeed, Las Vegas has become a mecca for these signs. The Caesars Palace hotel and casino installed what it calls an “electronic marquee” in 1984: It stands 100 feet high and has a readerboard that is 20 feet by 40 feet, complete with white, red, green and blue bulbs. The sign displays words, animated pictures and even videos.

If the proposed Del Amo sign were transplanted to the Las Vegas strip, “it would be one of the smallest” there, said Kirk L. Brimley, vice chairman for legislation for the National Electric Sign Assn.

Two Torrance shopping centers currently have readerboards, according to city records. The Southwood Shopping Center has a 240-square-foot sign approved by the city in 1985. Rolling Hills Plaza on Pacific Coast Highway has a 151-square-foot sign, also approved in 1985.

The readerboards at both centers were approved as trade-offs because they replaced a number of other signs, city officials said.

The debate over electronic readerboards is not limited to Torrance. The signs have raised government hackles in some other communities, Brimley said.

“As they get more popular, cities get more nervous about them,” Brimley said. “They don’t mind some of the smaller ones, but the larger ones make them nervous.”

But readerboards can serve a useful purpose, said Brimley, who estimates that 10,000 or more are operating around the country.

“The best thing is being able to use a lot of advertising in limited space, to cover a lot of tenants with a single panel,” Brimley said.

The use of readerboards boomed in the 1970s. An early form of readerboards are the time-and-temperature signs commonly displayed outside banks. The technology became popular at sports stadiums and outside automobile dealerships, said Jeffrey Stern, president of Superior Electrical Advertising of Long Beach, the firm that is designing the proposed Del Amo signs.

Today, shopping centers and malls increasingly are using readerboards to promote the names of their tenants, experts say. Sometimes they install readerboards to replace signs that stack the names of individual tenants.

A March, 1990, survey of 50 shopping centers found that while only 5% used “electronic changeable message centers,” another 14% anticipated adding them in the near future.

Of those using readerboards, 75% reported an increase in business, according to the survey, conducted for the American Sign and Indicator Corp. of Spokane, Wash.

The average price for a readerboard is as high as $80,000, and some malls are spending as much as $400,000 apiece for their signs, Stern said. Electric power to run the signs can cost $500 to $700 a month, Brimley said.

The 160-store Galleria at South Bay does not have an electronic readerboard and has no plans to buy one, especially because they are so expensive, said marketing director Mickey Thompson.

Del Amo has been planning its new signs since the mid-1980s. An early proposal for four signs--including one that would have been 644 square feet--was denied by the city’s Environmental Quality and Energy Conservation Commission in 1987.

The most recent proposal was scaled down sharply. The 336-square-foot sign on Hawthorne Boulevard would have a readerboard area of 120 square feet. Three other signs, each 18 feet high and 107 square feet in size, would be placed on Sepulveda Boulevard, Madrona Avenue and Carson Street.

Some city officials have said the mall should build a “prototype sign” to assess its impact. But Smith, the mall’s attorney, says that could add $214,000 to the total cost of the sign program.

Mall representatives say they are assessing what to do next.

“We believe Del Amo is the best mall anywhere around,” Smith said. “But the most competitive malls these days are using these signs.”

The electronic signs are more effective than static signs, he said.

“If you drive to work past the same place every day, and there’s a particular sign out there, and it never changes, you’re not going to bother to look at it. You know it’s there, so why bother to look at it?”