Billboard Ban Gets OK From City Planners

Hoping to halt the spread of visual blight, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission recommended Thursday that new billboards be banned in the city and rejected a proposal to allow them along freeways in exchange for the removal of 2,000 signs elsewhere in the city.

The commission also recommended a prohibition on “super-graphics,” the large vinyl signs that often are draped on buildings.

After several residents testified that the proliferation of billboards is ruining their neighborhoods, the commission voted unanimously to send the recommendations to the City Council for final action. The council has been more supportive of the trade-off proposal allowing freeway signs.

Commission President Mitchell B. Menzer agreed with residents that the proposal to end a 50-year prohibition of billboards along freeways is not worth the industry’s offer to take down 2,000 billboards elsewhere in the city. The latest proposal would have allowed 70 double-faced billboards to be erected along Los Angeles’ freeways.

“I think it’s a very bad idea to be heading in that direction and begin installing billboards along freeways,” Menzer said. “Putting billboards up along freeways does great damage to residential areas that are nearby.”

As to the effect the ban would have on the local economy, Commissioner Susan Hubbard Oakley said: “When you add more visual blight, you are not helping the economics of the city.”

The ban on new billboards would allow the city to designate specific commercial districts where billboards would be allowed. One such district is being considered for part of Hollywood, where billboards are thought to add to the atmosphere of the entertainment center, said Deputy Planning Director Frank Eberhard.

Billboard industry leaders attended the packed City Hall hearing Thursday but did not testify, saying afterward that they will save their arguments for the City Council.

Ken Spiker Jr., who represents several billboard firms, said council members know that most residents want to see billboards removed from their neighborhoods in exchange for some along freeways.

“If the deal is fair, then it has a chance in council,” Spiker said. “This is a fair deal.”

No date has been set for the council’s consideration. The recommendation goes first to the council’s planning and land use management committee. The commission also recommended that if freeway billboards are allowed their number be reduced from 70 to 50, because some areas of the city would require detailed environmental studies.

In particular, Eberhard said, billboards should not be allowed along Interstate 5 at the northern end of the city where they could obscure scenic mountain views.

Spiker said he expects the council to agree to allow 50 freeway billboards in exchange for the removal of 2,000 elsewhere.

He noted that the council voted 8 to 3 last June to tentatively allow 70 double-faced billboards along freeways.

But opponents of the exchange, including Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, noted that eight new council members have been elected since then.

“It is long past due that we ban billboards in the city of Los Angeles,” Miscikowski told the commission. “If we change our 50-year-plus ban on billboards along freeways, we in the city are going to pay a high price.”

She said a trade wouldn’t be necessary if existing laws were enforced. About 40% of the city’s estimated 10,000 billboards are illegal, mostly because they have been altered (usually enlarged) since they were first permitted. Enforcement would only force billboard firms to change them back, not take them down.

Miscikowski said other major cities, including San Jose, San Diego and Houston, already have banned new billboards.

The commission also heard opposition to freeway billboards from resident activists from Pacific Palisades and Tarzana and the Cahuenga Pass, Mid-City and northeast San Fernando Valley areas.

Jack Allen of the Palisades Preservation Assn. told the commission he opposes freeway billboards because they pose a potential traffic hazard.

“They are a distraction for drivers,” he said.