MY TURN: A new billboard in Coeur d'Alene
Last Tuesday evening may come to be seen to be a watershed moment in local history if a new billboard project is seen through to completion.
At the City Council meeting last Tuesday, Lamar Outdoor Advertising of Spokane was granted a sign permit to erect a new, 10-by-30-foot, double-sided, digital billboard on Government Way, just south of Neider Avenue. Lamar's proposal included a mock-up of the sign, as shown in an accompanying photo. If this sign is constructed as planned, I predict that it will loom over Government Way like Godzilla stalking the landscape, will irritate and distract a large number of motorists and will be looked at with regret by the City Council members who voted for it.
Because the construction of new billboards has been prohibited in Coeur d'Alene since the 1960s, this new structure will instead be considered to be a "re-location" of an older, fixed billboard located at 1621 Northwest Blvd., and will not be considered a new structure. As a condition of this "re-location," the old billboard must be removed.
A photo of the existing 10-by-30-foot billboard on Northwest Boulevard is also attached. The existing billboard is in good shape, being supported by two sturdy steel I-Beams. However, I suspect that the installation of a new utility pole directly in front of the north side of the billboard has Lamar seeing its revenue from this sign diminish considerably, and this fact may be spurring their request.
According to the sign code, an updated billboard may not rise any higher than the old billboard it is replacing, which is approximately 28 feet. However, the proposed digital billboard on Government Way will need to be at least 7 feet taller than the present billboard to rise above the roof line of the storage building which it will be placed next to, and it has actually been pegged to be 37 feet tall, 9 feet higher than the present billboard.
Lamar applied for variances because of these two limitations. These variances were granted Tuesday evening by a 4-2 vote of the City Council. These variances also granted exception to the requirement that any relocated billboard structure must be a least 500 feet from residential properties, which it isn't. These variances will allow Lamar to proceed with its new structure in this new location. The variance procedure necessary to make this newest proposal possible was added to the sign code recently at Lamar's request.
I have been self-employed as a sign maker since age 22, and since 1988 in Coeur d'Alene. From 1989 to 2011, I served in a volunteer capacity on the Coeur d'Alene Sign Board, upon appointment by Mayor Ray Stone. The board met monthly; wrote, reviewed and revised sections of the Sign Code; and sat as a quasi-judicial body while hearing occasional variance requests. Therefore, I have had considerable experience, both making signs and dealing with sign-code issues.
During my time on the Sign Board, and throughout the entire history of the Coeur d'Alene Sign Code, there has been a strong guiding principle that signs identifying and advertising a specific business must be located entirely on the premises of the subject business. The flip-side of this is that Off Premises Signs are prohibited throughout the city. Interestingly, billboards display only off-premises messages, day and night.
In the beginning, billboards were permitted to be much larger than other commercial signs, because they were originally used in areas beyond city limits alongside highways where they needed to be large to be legible to traffic traveling at highway speeds. However, as small towns have grown into crowded, busy cities, super-sized billboards have become less and less appropriate or necessary. In urban settings they have become relics of a time that no longer exists.
Rather than allowing this latest brainchild of the outdoor advertising industry to become reality along Government Way, I would ask that the City Council first reverse this permitting decision, and then look seriously at banning outdoor advertising within the city limits. The city should require that leases of billboard sites will have sunset clauses and will be non-renewable, and then require the billboard structures to be removed when their leases have expired. If the owners want to relocate their billboards somewhere in the county, beyond the city limits, that is between them and the county. I am only speaking regarding the city of Coeur d'Alene.
If this reasoning rings true with you, please contact the City Council members and the mayor with your objections to Lamar's project, and perhaps they will reconsider. If locals aren't particularly concerned and don't speak up, then soon we will have a shiny new, digital billboard to command our attention as we travel back and forth on this core section of Government Way. If there is enough response to this letter, perhaps the City Council will reconsider this sign permit before the billboard gets built.
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Jeff Connaway is a Coeur d'Alene resident.
