Electronic billboard rules would restrict locations, limit brightness
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After much debate and arguments for both tighter and more lax regulations from concerned parties, the city planning commission on Tuesday approved an ordinance regulating electronic advertisements, passing the measure with a 4-2 vote.
The ordinance now goes to City Council, which will determine the bill's fate.
Under the ordinance, digital signs will be able to flash messages eight times per minute, four times more than the initial draft of the bill would have permitted, and signs will be illuminated at brighter levels both during the day and at night than the first draft would have allowed.
Existing digital signs will be allowed to operate at their current brightness levels, but if sign owners or operators wish to erect new electronic billboards on existing sites, they will have to comply with the new regulations. Electric signs that lie in the path of sunlight and those with other complications will be permitted to apply for special exceptions granting them the right to run at higher brightness levels.
No electric signs will be allowed in areas of the city zoned as parks, residential, local neighborhood coalition, or hillside, as residents and planners alike worried about so-called light pollution forcing unwanted shadows and hues onto city residents.
Among those who spoke at Tuesday's three-hour session were several Downtown residents, who voiced opposition to any digital billboards in the city, attorneys representing the advertising firm Lamar, which owns most of the digital billboards in Pittsburgh, and the Penguins, who worried they would not able to rebroadcast games on outdoor Jumbotrons were the bill to pass.
Downtown residents John Rohe said "there is something deeply offensive about digital billboards and the effect they have on the community."
Architect Kevin Wagstaff, of the Downtown firm Perfido, Weiskopff, Wagstaff and Goettel, said he and members of Pittsburgh's architecture community feel adding such displays, which jockey for space with natural vistas, would detract from Pittsburgh's natural beauty and allure.
First Published June 1, 2011 12:00 am
