Santa Ana Is a Battlefield in Billboard Wars : Advertising: What city calls eyesores their owners call freedom of expression. But the courts will have the last word.

Robert Wheeler shakes his head as he looks at the photograph in his hands. It’s a glossy shot of the Bank of America billboard that sits 35 feet above the 1100 block of South Harbor Boulevard.

“This is a mega-beast,” says Wheeler, a Santa Ana assistant city attorney. “It’s taller than the trees.”

Santa Ana officials, who want to boost their city’s image, call such billboards eyesores. But the companies that put them up say the billboards are “unique forums for protected self-expression,” and maintain the city is trying to run them out of town.

The dispute has landed both sides in court, where outdoor advertising businesses have sued the city to keep their billboards standing.

At issue are three billboards that were put up in the early and mid-1980. The city permits for each has expired and city officials have refused to renew them.

“Things are impossible in Santa Ana,” said attorney Ronald Berg, who represents Metropolitan Outdoor Advertising, one of the three companies that have sued the city in Orange County Superior Court. “They have made one of their agenda items, in an informal manner, the removal of billboards.”

The billboard companies are fighting to keep the signs up--or to make the city pay for taking them down. They want the city to pay them not just for the physical cost of signs, but for what the signs represent in advertising revenue.

In a recent Santa Ana case, for example, one billboard expert enlisted by an advertising company estimated the value of a board at more than $1 million, Wheeler said.

But city officials and attorneys say they don’t have to reimburse companies to take down signs that are up illegally.

In addition, they contend that the signs make the city look bad and can distract drivers on freeways. In past years, residents have passed out petitions to keep large billboards out of some parts of town.

“They call them ‘outdoor advertising displays’ . . . but they’re big, ugly billboards,” Wheeler said.

City Councilman Robert L. Richardson said the Bank of America billboard, one of the three in dispute, “adds nothing to the appearance of Harbor Boulevard.”

During the 1960s and 1970s, many cities across the country pushed to remove billboards, industry officials said.

But in the past 15 years, cities have had a hard time getting rid of billboards without compensating companies for them, although sign companies have been less successful in setting up new billboards, said Ronald Beals, a vice president and legal counsel at Gannett Outdoor Co. of California, an outdoor advertising firm.

Some Orange County cities such as Westminster and Orange have passed ordinances to limit new billboards. The city of Orange is still embroiled in a federal lawsuit dating back to 1985 centering on its billboard policy.

Santa Ana has not prohibited billboards, but has put restrictions on their size and location, city Planning Commissioner Glenn Mondo said.

‘Whenever we have an opportunity, through rehabilitation, we try to get those things taken down as part of the package of improving the image of the city,” Richardson said.

“There have been no new billboards in the last three-plus years. They don’t even apply” for permits for them.

The city already has won one of the three pending billboard cases, but the ruling has been appealed. It is scheduled before the state 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana on Feb. 22. Attorneys say the court’s decision may set a precedent that determines whether a city must reimburse billboard companies for their lost signs, even if the signs were up illegally.

That case involves a Metropolitan Outdoor billboard that stands in the 200 block of South Grand Avenue, with a permit that expired in 1989. When Metropolitan sued Santa Ana in June, 1992, to keep that board up, a Superior Court judge ruled in the city’s favor.

Billboard giant Patrick Media Group also has sued Santa Ana, asking that the city reimburse the company for the cost of the board on South Harbor Boulevard.

Regency Outdoor Advertising filed the third lawsuit. After Regency pulled its billboard off its support post in the 2000 block of South Ritchey Street, city officials said a new permit was needed to rebuild the structure more than a year later.

“They’re very litigious,” Santa Ana City Atty. Edward J. Cooper said about billboard companies. “I’ve got four or five boxes full of papers (from the Regency case alone). It’s incredible.”