Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight Sees Dawn of a New Day
A January 27, 2002 editorial in the Los Angeles Times – “Blight with deep pockets” – began, “It shouldn’t be so hard to stop the mad–often illegal–rush to put billboards on every available corner in Los Angeles.”
It shouldn’t be so hard, perhaps – but more than eight years later, it is difficult to ward off cynicism at the feckless attempts of the City Council to regulate billboards, from supergraphics to modest eyesores. The billboard companies and individual developers with huge buildings have waged a two-pronged battle against any vestige of regulation – or taxation – of outdoor advertising. It has been Gucci Gulch on the one hand: with campaign dollars, lobbyists, and first amendment attorneys. And on the other hand: a brazen contempt for the law.
In this context, the installation of an illegal 8-story supergraphic wrapped around a building on Hollywood and Highland just up the street from the Kodak Theatre – where the ad would be visible on television broadcasts when red carpet interviews take place at the Academy Awards next week – is hardly newsworthy. Since the going rate for a supergraphic is said to be in the neighborhood of $100,000 a month, one can understand why the owner of the building would ignore warnings by email and letter – and even a cease-and-desist order – urging him not to erect an unpermitted sign. (“Businessman held on $1 million bail in supergraphic case” by David Zahniser, February 28, 2010)
Enter our City Attorney, Carmen Trutanich (who seems, near the beginning of his first term in public office, to be more comfortable wielding a meat cleaver than a scalpel). He made news when he had Kayvan Setareh, the Pacific Palisades businessman who owns the building in question, arrested and jailed – on $1 million bail.
Tim Rutten, writing in this morning’s LA Times (“Bunning and Trutanich – bullies in high place”), believes our city attorney has “anger management issues.” Dennis Hathaway, of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight, takes a different view, suggesting that this heralds “the dawn of a new day.”
I hope to do a follow-up story on the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight, “a non-profit 501(c)(4) organization representing groups and individuals committed to defending the urban landscape of Los Angeles against billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising that blight our public spaces.”
(David Zahniser reported in Tuesday’s Times that Mr. Setareh had agreed to take down the sign; CBBB’s website reported last night that the sign was coming down. The image is of a photo taken Monday.)
