Anti-billboard activists say the city now has an important tool to do away with hundreds of illegal billboards plastered on buildings.
They are pressing the city to use a court decision issued last week to force NextMedia Outdoor, a major national billboard advertiser, to take down the bulk of the 900 wall-mounted billboards it owns in Philadelphia.
The ruling in essence declared NextMedia's billboards illegal, despite an agreement the firm had reached in 1995 with then-Licenses and Inspections Commissioner Bennett Levin in Mayor Ed Rendell's administration.
"They are near our churches, our homes and our schools," said Mary Tracy, executive director of the Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight. "One would hope that the city will now move to enforce... and remove all these illegal signs."
"Get rid of them immediately," said City Councilman David Cohen, who in 1991 sponsored a law that tightened restrictions on billboards and banned new signs from being within 660 feet of playgrounds, parks, schools, and a variety of other places.
City officials yesterday had little to say about the ruling or what they might do with it.
"Our Law Department believes [the judge] made the right decision," said Luz Cardenas, a spokeswoman for Mayor Street.
It was the Street administration that originally notified NextMedia in 2001 that hundreds of wall-mounted signs the company owned were not licensed or permitted, and therefore were illegal. It was that notification that prompted the suit by NextMedia, which sought to force the city to comply with an agreement to legalize 1,000 6-foot-by-12-foot, wall-mounted billboards known in the industry as "eight-sheets."
In its suit, the Colorado-based company had argued that a 1995 agreement with Levin legalized 1,000 of these billboards, which are usually found in working-class urban areas and often carry beer and other advertisements that community groups and residents find offensive. Currently, about 900 of these billboards remain.
In return for legalizing the billboards, the agreement with Levin called for NextMedia's predecessor, Chesapeake Outdoor Enterprises, to pay the city thousands of dollars in permit and license fees and to remove an additional 350 illegal, wall-mounted billboards it owned.
NextMedia acquired Chesapeake in 2001 but has not removed the 350 signs or paid the city the permit and license fees, which now amount to more than $1 million.
On Thursday, Common Pleas Court Judge Gene D. Cohen, no relation to the councilman, ruled against NextMedia, saying that the 1995 agreement was illegal because it had not been reviewed or approved by the city's Law Department.
The judge also denied the city's request for the more than $1 million in overdue fees. Cohen criticized Levin, saying that the "good faith but expedient impulse of a governmental official simply to 'get the job done' does not do the job."
The judge also said that he had a "serious concern" about "Levin's illegal promise" to grant "1,000 permits flatly without examining the individual circumstances pertaining to each sign location and characteristics."
Levin could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Cardenas, the mayor's spokeswoman, said the administration would not comment further on the case, saying the judge's "decision is not final" because it can be appealed.
David Zalesne, a NextMedia lawyer with the law firm of Klehr Harrison, a major campaign contributor to Street, said company officials were "still considering their options."
Carl Primavera, another NextMedia lawyer with Klehr Harrison, said that many of the signs were decades old and that it would be difficult and cost prohibitive for the city and NextMedia to try to register each sign with the city on an individual basis.
"The city never really required them to have permits," Primavera said. "The city had always kind of ignored them."
In its lawsuit, NextMedia said the billboards generate revenue for building owners who receive rent from NextMedia for allowing the company to put the ads up. The company says the billboards also benefit businesses and advertisers who contract with NextMedia to sell goods and services.
Neighborhood leaders such as Farah Jimenez say it is tough to revitalize commercial corridors like the one on Germantown Avenue in Mount Airy when there are billboards slapped against buildings.
"They're visual noise. It's just a distraction from what is beautiful on our main street," said Jimenez, the head of Mount Airy, USA Community Development Corp., a group working to build new housing and attract businesses.
Mount Airy resident Rhonda Chellis agreed and said she wished someone would do something about the billboard ads across the street from her home at Germantown Avenue and Sharpnack Street.
One of the NextMedia billboards that up until recently greeted her each day had a scantily clad woman hawking malt liquor, she said. It caught the attention of her 4-year-old daughter.
"She asked me can she get a bra like the lady," Chellis said. "I said: 'What lady?' "
Sang Park is the owner of the Neighborhood Market store that has the billboards that Chellis and her children see every day. He would not say exactly how much NextMedia pays him each year for the right to place two billboards on each side of his building, but he says the money helps.
"They pay on time," Park said, adding that the dispute between the city and NextMedia is not his problem.