Billboards Gone Wild: 4,000 Illegal Billboards Choke L.A.'s Neighborhoods

Unlike Houston, Philadelphia, Tucson and San Francisco, in L.A., big and small outdoor advertisers often ignore the ban on new billboards or blatantly blow past restrictions on their existing signs — illegally doubling the size, or adding a second face.

The bizarre lawlessness has gone on so long City Hall has no idea if the estimated 4,000 illegal billboards are even safe. Keith Stephens, owner of L.A. Outdoor, who erected the illegal billboard just before Thanksgiving, insists he used legit building inspectors to assure its safety. The real reason he built it on the sly was to poke City Hall in the eye for blatantly rewarding the owners of potentially thousands of illegal billboards — his much richer competitors, Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor. “All the city is doing is handing the keys to two companies,” huffs Stephens.

Rena Kosnett

Billboard warriors Ted Wu and Gerald Silver: "We were hummingbirds."

Rena Kosnett

Tin ear: Rocky Delgadillo glad-handing at the Four Seasons.

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More About

• Ted Wu
• Rocky Delgadillo
• Jack Weiss
• Politics
• Outdoor Advertising

Billboard activist Hathaway says that, in a normal world, “an inspector would have had to look at the excavation and sign off before any concrete was poured. There’s no way to know if it has the proper structural integrity and won’t topple onto the freeway.”

But this is not a normal world. L.A. is an unregulated, out-of-control playground for the illegal-billboard industry, second to no other urban area in America. For instance Vista Outdoor three years ago admitted they were “unable to locate” permits for 500 smaller billboards and agreed to take them down but L.A. building officials openly admit today they have no clue whether they were removed. Ten years ago, Regency, another billboard company, accused Clear Channel of reaping $5 million from illegal billboards.

Punishment for L.A. Outdoor was never in the cards. Jail, laughable. Villaraigosa, Delgadillo and the City Council are, in fact, doing the opposite: They are richly rewarding three billboard firms — CBS, Clear Channel and Regency — quietly letting them erect 877 pulsating, ultrabright, light-emitting-diode advertising signs in dozens of unsuspecting neighborhoods citywide. And now, a month after Councilman Reyes proposed a windfall for billboard firms — a new “sign district” allowing megasigns downtown — Councilman Herb Wesson is demanding a much bigger special district in Koreatown. One big reason the City Council is so keen to create special “sign districts” filled with street clutter: Richard Alarcon, Tony Cardenas, Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel, Janice Hahn, Jose Huizar, Tom LaBonge, Bernard Parks, Jan Perry, Ed Reyes, Bill Rosendahl, Greig Smith, Jack Weiss, Herb Wesson, Dennis Zine and the mayor have all accepted campaign funds from the industry they have failed to regulate.

Rena Kosnett

(Click to enlarge)

Tin ear: Rocky Delgadillo glad-handing at the Four Seasons.

Rena Kosnett

(Click to enlarge)

Dennis Hathaway protests the half-mil Delgadillo took from billboard giants.

The digital-billboard makeover of L.A. was concocted behind closed doors by Delgadillo a little more than a year ago and approved with little notice by the City Council. As a result, few Angelenos realize that these animated billboards, visible for more than a mile, are coming to their areas. Those who do know are furious.

“It’s as if someone’s plasma TV is outside our window,” says Roberta Dacks, who is fully 10 blocks away from a hyperintense LED billboard that suddenly appeared at Cahuenga and Barham boulevards. City leaders, from Garcetti to Delgadillo, call the garish displays “modernizations.”

Is chronic incompetence or indifference at City Hall to blame for what is now unfolding? Could long-rumored but never proven corruption be playing a role? With Angelenos about to get an eyeful from 877 LED billboards, those questions take center stage in a battle over billboards gone wild.

The current billboard battle dates from the 1980s, when then–City Council aide Cindy Miscikowski and her boss, the late Councilman Marvin Braude, tried to ban new billboards. They failed but made small inroads. “I told him we were making progress,” she recalls. “There was no reason we needed [more billboards].”

But construction unions showed up in City Council chambers to complain that they would be unemployed. With historic highs in murder and street crime unfolding in the ’80s, billboard clutter was barely on city leaders’ radar.

“Most of the people couldn’t care less,” recalls Ted Wu, an architect. The soft-spoken Wu became an unlikely crusader, the go-to guy against billboard companies. In 1984, he helped the City Council toughen the codes and worked to pass a law preventing billboards from appearing within 600 feet of each other. Along the way, he met activist Gerry Silver, a now-retired professor of business administration at Long Beach City College.

Silver and Wu in the 1990s decried the lack of height regulations on new, towering billboards being placed atop L.A. buildings. When the City Council heard about the activist pair, it ordered then–City Attorney James Hahn to stop the two concerned citizens; then major billboard firms joined the council’s effort.

“We got pummeled by a huge amount of paperwork and pleadings,” recalls Silver with disgust. “Our volunteer attorney couldn’t handle it ... I couldn’t even keep up with the reading. We ended up withdrawing the litigation. That is the story of fighting the billboard people. They were tigers — and we were hummingbirds.”