The mayor quietly strikes
a deal with sign company to erect billboards on city
property
In a precedent-setting move, Mayor Ed Rendell is backing a deal that would give a local sign company the right to erect on city property two billboards that will be visible from the Walt Whitman Bridge.
The mayor supports the deal despite the Department of Licenses and Inspections' refusal to grant the company a permit because the proposed signs violate the city's billboard ordinance on a number of fronts.
While previous administrations have rejected requests from sign companies to lease or license property from the city for billboards, the Rendell administration has reached a tentative licensing agreement with Keystone Outdoor Advertising Company. The agreement will allow it to construct a giant double-faced billboard on the grounds of the Water Department's southeast treatment plant, which is adjacent to the Walt Whitman Bridge.
Under the terms of the contract, Keystone would pay the city $1.2 million over 30 years--or $40,000 per year--for the right to display ads on city property. Keystone would also be required to share 10 percent of profits generated from advertising revenues with the city.
The proposal is "an absolute winner for the City of Philadelphia" because it will generate money for the city, says the mayor's spokesman Kevin Feeley.
Billboard opponents say the money will hardly make a difference to the city, while the signs will have a negative impact on the image of the city and the quality of life here.
The agreement is dead unless the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA)--the city body established to hear appeals and whose members are appointed by Rendell--overrules L&I's decision. Keystone has filed an appeal and the ZBA is expected to hear the case after Labor Day.
The city's billboard ordinance--introduced by Councilman David Cohen and passed in late 1991 by City Council--prohibits billboards within 660 feet of the Walt Whitman Bridge to prevent drivers from being distracted. The ordinance also prohibits signs within 500 feet of another sign. In addition, it restricts the size of billboards to under 1,500 square feet, and keeps them away from playgrounds and schools. Considered more important by billboard opponents, the ordinance caps the number of billboards that can be erected in the city. If, for instance, a sign company receives a permit for a billboard, it must remove a sign of similar size from another location.
According to L&I's refusal notice, Keystone's proposed signs are too close to the bridge and to other signs, and are too large at 2,400 square feet each; and the company is not offering to remove any of its existing signs.
Keystone--headed by Dominick Cipollini, a friend of Rendell's who contributed $5,000 to his campaign in 1997--approached the city earlier this year with the sign proposal for the Walt Whitman Bridge.
In April of this year, Deputy Chief of Staff John Estey sent a letter to Alice Henry, supervisor of L&I's Zoning Section, introducing Keystone's application for the billboards. That, says Councilman Cohen--who opposes the billboard plan--was a highly unusual level of involvement by the Mayor's Office concerning a simple use permit. The only other person to receive an official copy of Estey's letter was attorney Carl Primavera, perhaps the leading billboard attorney in the city, who is representing Keystone.
Primavera, another long-time friend of Rendell, works at the mayor's former law firm of Mesirov Gelman Jaffe Cramer & Jamieson, whose lawyers contributed a total of $25,000 to Rendell's campaign in 1996 and 1997. Primavera, who is on vacation until the end of the month, could not be reached for comment. Primavera personally contributed nothing to Rendell's campaign in 1996 and 1997.
Feeley says Estey's involvement did not constitute special treatment as evidenced by the fact that L&I rejected the application. Also, he says "there is no correlation between [contributions] and something being wired. This deal stands on its own merits. Keystone came to us and we think it is a good deal for the city."
Councilman Cohen and anti-billboard activists think the deal stinks, and Cohen questions why a proposal obviously contradictory to city policy is being supported by the mayor.
"The city is asking that its own law be violated," says Cohen. "It flies in the face of the city code passed by the city in early 1991 that was aimed at capping the number of billboards in the city."
While acknowledging that the proposal violates the city code, Feeley noted that the billboards will generate a "considerable amount of money for the general fund in a non-obtrusive way to residents in an area already populated by billboards."
"This is sickening," says Cohen. "The mayor takes many good positions, and is an effective spokesman for the city. But his deal takes optimism to new realms of unreality. This will do damage to the city's image. The city is intent on breaking down the environmental safeguards put in place by the law."
"It sets a dangerous precedent because the city is saying city property is up for grabs," says Mary Tracy, who heads the Society Created To Reduce Urban Blight, an anti-billboard group known as SCRUB. "Taxpayers own land throughout the city and we expect the city government to protect it. Selling billboards is robbing the public of sky and visual space. The money from the billboard [to the city] is a pittance, when you consider how much tax dollars are invested in roads and attracting tourism here."
Frank Vespe of Scenic America, a DC-based advocacy group that tries to preserve the country's roadsides and follows billboard legislation, estimates that each of the proposed billboards could generate as much as $10,000 a month, of which the city would get 10 percent.
"Operators are buying the right to put up billboards where they should not be," says Vespe, who says other cities are leasing property for billboards. "But what the public says is that it's sick and tired of billboards."
The ZBA can grant a variance to Keystone only if Keystone can prove that enforcing the zoning code will result in undue hardship to the company, and that the variance won't harm the public interest.
A review of several recent billboard appeals shows that the ZBA has granted variances to sign companies on just such grounds.
Councilman Cohen says he is puzzled by Keystone's appeal because he does not see how it can prove a hardship. To do so, Cohen says, it must show that land can't be used for any other purpose, and therefore, is limited in how it can make the property profitable. Keystone, however, does not own the land--the city does--and the land is already being utilized by the Water Department.
"Philadelphia has one of the toughest sign ordinances in the country," says Tracy, who formed SCRUB in 1990 to help pass the billboard ordinance. "The problem is that the zoning board never enforces the law."
If the ZBA grants the variance to Keystone, the licensing agreement will be executed and managed by the Philadelphia Authority of Industrial Development (PAID), a quasi-public agency that assists the city's economic development efforts. PAID is not subject to City Council's review and therefore is being used by the mayor, says Cohen, to keep the issue outside of Council's reach.
"PAID is a creature of the mayor, so it is difficult for anyone to oppose it," says Cohen. "Giving the deal to PAID is aimed at avoiding presenting a deal before a legislative body. When you take away something from Council, you take it away from the public and the chance to be heard."
PAID officials did not return calls from City Paper before deadline.
In this case, the city plans to lease the Water Department's land to PAID, which will license the billboard space to Keystone. (Keystone will pay for and build the sign and supporting structure.)
The license agreement prohibits Keystone from advertising tobacco or alcohol products, but specifically allows gambling and casino advertising.
Ironically, last November PAID opposed a billboard variance granted by the ZBA to Procacci Bros. Sales Corporation, a food distributor located in the Food Distribution Center District, which is not far from the Walt Whitman Bridge. The company wanted to erect three billboards on its property, but a city ordinance specifically prohibits billboards in the area. PAID, which oversees development in the Food Distribution Center District, joined SCRUB and the Center City Residents Association in appealing ZBA's decision to the Court of Common Pleas. But the attorney for Procacci Bros.--Carl Primavera--argued that the groups did not have legal standing to oppose the billboards because they were not affected by the sign's presence.
Judge Stephen Levin agreed and quashed the appeal.
Earlier this year, the ZBA granted a billboard variance to Freedom International Trucks, Inc., located in the Tacony section of the city. Again, Tracy appealed to the Court of Common Pleas. But Freedom International's attorney--Carl Primavera--filed a motion to quash her testimony on the grounds that she does not have standing. Again, the judge agreed.
Tracy and SCRUB are appealing Levin's decision in both cases before the Commonwealth Court. She says the case of her legal standing should be heard this fall.
Recently, Tracy was successful in overturning a ZBA variance granted to a sign company for a billboard at 1200 Byberry Road. In this case, L&I rejected the billboard permit because it was too close to an existing right-of-way, but the company received a variance. Tracy appealed in Common Pleas Court but was knocked out for lack of standing. But she appealed to the Commonwealth Court and received standing, allowing her to challenge the decision. In June, the Commonwealth Court overturned ZBA's earlier decision.
Tracy and Cohen have also set their sights on a billboard permit near Fifth and Vine Streets. Although L&I rejected the permit on the grounds that it was too close to Independence National Park and the Vine Street Expressway area, a major gateway to the city. But the sign's owner, Universal Outdoor, Inc.--represented by Carl Primavera--received variance from the ZBA just this week. (A legally licensed billboard already exists on the building. The recently approved sign would be erected next to it.)
Anti-billboard activist and attorney Judith Eden, who heads the Center City Residents Association, believes billboards near city gateways are particularly troublesome because they run contrary to the city's efforts to create an historic area.
"You don't come into Georgetown in DC via a billboard corridor?" she asks rhetorically.