Bright, Distracting Digitals Coming to the 405?

BILLBOARD WATCH-New digital billboards could be coming to LA residents and motorists on one of the busiest stretches of freeway in the city, thanks to a proposal being considered by Culver City, an island of 40,000 people surrounded by Los Angeles. 

The proposal floated to Culver City officials three weeks ago calls for a full-size, double-sided digital billboard on the west side of the 405 Freeway where it crosses Sepulveda Blvd. Another full-size, single-sided digital billboard would be placed at the heavily-trafficked intersection of Sepulveda Blvd. and Centinela Ave. just a short distance from the freeway and visible to motorists on the roadway that carries some 300,000 vehicles per day.  Click here to see proposal, including map showing billboard locations.    

Digital billboards are currently banned in LA and all but two of the brightly-lighted signs with rapidly-changing ads put up before the ban remain shut off by court order. However, Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor, the two companies that own those billboards, have been pursuing deals with smaller cities in the metropolitan area to allow digital billboards in their jurisdictions. 

The proposal put forward by The Carlyle Group, a multi-billion dollar company that owns commercial properties in the area, also calls for a double-sided digital billboard on Centinela Ave. about one-quarter mile west of the freeway, two double sided static billboards nearby on the same street, and a wall sign of undisclosed size on the side of an 11-story hotel adjacent to and facing the freeway.  The area immediately to the west of Centinela Ave. is in the city of LA, including a residential neighborhood on an overlooking bluff. 

According to the proposal, the billboards are to operated by CBS Outdoor and would be expected to generate “in excess of $420,000 for the city in annual revenue.” The proposal calls for an “overlay zone” in the area that would allow other landowners along the freeway corridor to propose similar signage. 

The proposal notes that Culver City previously approved static billboards on the east side of the 405 freeway on the property of the Westfield shopping mall. Those billboards were originally obscured at least partially by trees in the freeway right-of-way, but those trees were illegally cut down and never replaced.   

(Dennis Hathaway is the president of the Ban Billboard Blight coalition.  He can be reached at: [email protected]) 

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 48

Pub: June 13, 2014