‘Visual Pollution’ in L.A.--There’s No Discernible Sign of a Reduction

Auto dealer Richard Kim was hoping to attract more business when he put up a colorful hot air balloon advertising his car lot to motorists on the Santa Monica Freeway.

What he got instead was a $250 fine for violating Los Angeles’ new sign law.

Kim was the first person to be prosecuted under the law--for violating a prohibition on advertising that “constitutes a hazard to the safe and efficient operation of vehicles upon a street or freeway.” He also spent $3,000 for a balloon that he cannot use.

In all, about 500 merchants have been ordered to bring their signs into conformance with the law, which will be a year old on July 5. Countless others have been blocked from erecting new signs. In one case, the McDonald’s hamburger chain was stopped from posting its trademark golden arches sign at a location in the San Fernando Valley--too many signs already were there, authorities said. In another, a painter was cited for adorning an outside wall in Hollywood with an 85-foot-tall promotional mural for an aspiring actress.

Virtually No Limits

Except for a ban on signs that can be “viewed primarily” from Los Angeles freeways, adopted by the City Council in the 1950s, there were virtually no limits on the location and size of signs before the law was passed last year. Permits had been required to make sure that signs were installed safely. Aesthetics were not considerations.

However, as a casual glance can tell, there has been no discernible lessening in the number of large billboards and other signs vying for consumers’ attention across most of the city. The 1986 ordinance, the culmination of a 20-year struggle by environmentalists and homeowners, states as a goal the reduction of “visual pollution” from too many signs. Yet the signs are seemingly as thick as ever.

Results of the 1986 law, its backers say, will become apparent in time, as more and more offices and stores are built or renovated under the new restrictions. The new rules do not govern the vast majority of signs that went up before the ordinance was approved.

Only since then has the law required new billboards to be 200 feet from homes on the same side of the street. It also requires new billboards to be 100 to 600 feet from other billboards, depending on size, except at intersections, where up to four are permitted.

Signs on offices and stores are limited to a total size of four square feet for each foot of building frontage. A complex formula governs how the square footage can be divided among signs mounted on the face of the building, those on poles and those projecting from the building. Generally, larger stores are permitted more and bigger signs than smaller stores.

Some signs are prohibited, most notably new signs projecting above roofs. For example, the practice of one-story bank branches of placing their logos on poles projecting from their roofs is now prohibited. The law also regulates signs atop high-rises and the brightness of illuminated signs facing residential areas. Real estate signs and signs for garage sales are regulated by a separate city law.

Violations of the law are misdemeanors, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Critics of sign proliferation say none of this goes far enough.

“It’s better than nothing, but I doubt whether it’s strong enough,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, whose district includes a 3 1/2-mile stretch of Ventura Boulevard in Encino that exhibits 33 billboards and 1,500 smaller signs.

“We can look right out our bedroom window and see the Marlboro man smoking,” complained Robert Rome, an Encino psychologist whose view of the Santa Monica Mountains is obstructed by a giant billboard.

Ted Wu, a director of Los Angeles Beautiful, a civic improvement organization, complained that the law permits too many large signs. It allows, for example, signs of up to 300 square feet hanging from the sides of buildings. “That’s equivalent to a sign that is 8 feet wide and 37 1/2 feet high, or more than three stories in height.”

Braude is pushing for stronger restrictions, especially against billboards. The Los Angeles County-Orange County area ranks No.1 in the nation in billboards with an estimated 22,000, nearly twice the number in the second-ranked New York-New Jersey area, according to the advertising broker Outdoor Services Inc.

Braude has proposed prohibiting new billboards within a 300-foot radius of residential property. The effect, according to a city Planning Department analysis, would be to prohibit new billboards at “virtually all neighborhood commercial intersections and along most of the frontage of commercial strips.”

Braude and homeowners also would like to cut in half the sign space allowed to offices and stores. And, they advocate requiring that businesses, over a five-year period, take down many of the signs that are legal only because they went up before the new law became effective.

They face a formidable obstacle.

The billboard industry has contributed $176,673 in reelection campaign funds to City Council members and Mayor Tom Bradley since 1982, according to a Times analysis. And it has employed some of the most effective lobbyists operating at City Hall, including former Councilman Arthur K. Snyder and Kenneth Spiker, the city’s former chief legislative analyst.

Braude said that if the council fails to adopt stronger controls, he will seek voter approval of a sign control initiative. Braude was a leading proponent of Proposition U, the slow-growth initiative approved by the voters last year.

Proponents of a stronger sign law are encouraged by what they see as a rebellion against commercial intrusion into neighborhoods. They say the strength of the rebellion was apparent in the overwhelming approval of Proposition U and this month’s defeat of Council President Pat Russell, a leading opponent of tougher sign restrictions, by environmentalist Ruth Galanter.

Meanwhile, in the first year of operation of the present law, many of the approximately 500 citations issued were for temporary signs--typically banners and large window signs advertising sales--put up without permits.

Many other violations were for signs that took up more space in windows than is permitted by the law. The owner of Encino Lock & Safe, for example, said he received a citation for having letters spelling out his shop’s name in the store window “a few inches larger” than allowed. The law restricts permanent signs to 10% of a store’s window space.

There were also these cases:

- The painter of the huge mural of an actress on the side of a building near Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street was cited for his failure to obtain the approval of the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission. The mural was commissioned by an actress calling herself Angelyne--she refuses to give her last name--to attract job offers.

Barry Blue, whose firm painted the mural, is challenging the citation, maintaining that all he did was paint over a mural that was there before.

“It’s just like changing a billboard,” Blue said. “You don’t need city approval every time you change the message.”

But Daniel Straka, a city sign inspector, said the law does apply. He said that a wall painted clean of one mural to make way for another creates advertising anew. The dispute will be resolved in court, Straka predicted.

- The owner of a Sherman Oaks hot dog stand was cited for using wood instead of non-burnable material to fashion a sign in the shape of a bun around a wiener. The merchant complained and was allowed to keep the sign with slight modifications after presenting petitions containing 3,300 signatures and letters from elected officials proclaiming the sign a Valley landmark.

- A McDonald’s restaurant in the San Fernando Valley was told that it could not put up a sign showing its golden arches on property where it wants to build a restaurant because the legal maximum number of signs were already displayed on the property. McDonald’s was advised that it could share display space with a dentist and a liquor store. However, the fast-food chain could not accept the offer because of its nationwide policy of prohibiting its advertising along with ads for liquor.

Two alleged sign violation cases are pending in court.

Both involve downtown businesses accused of putting up signs--in these cases, banners--that can be viewed primarily from the freeway. Many signs, especially billboards, can be seen from freeways but are permitted because they were positioned to be viewed primarily from other streets.

Spokesmen for two of the largest billboard companies in Los Angeles said the law has reduced the number of billboards they have in the city.

Fred Guido, vice president of public affairs and real estate for Gannett Outdoor Co. Inc. of Southern California, said his company has removed 82 billboards since the law went into effect and added only eight.

Ed Dato, a spokesman for Patrick Media Group, said that since the law went into effect the company has removed 93 billboards and installed only 12 citywide. Before the law went into effect, Dato said, the company erected about as many signs as it took down.

Critics contend, however, that 263 new billboards have gone up in the city in the last year and that the law would permit thousands more. City officials as yet have no count of a net increase or decrease.

A common example of a billboard location’s demise comes about when it is removed while the property it is on is being redeveloped. To replace the billboard thereafter, it must be in compliance with the new law.

Even though the effect of the ordinance is not easy to see, it will become more apparent in time, Dato contends.

He said that advocates of stronger controls “don’t realize the impact that the current law will have in time. They will see a change. They’ll realize it’s a very restrictive law.”

Business owners claim that the law also has caused them a financial hardship or put them at a competitive disadvantage.

Bill Leber, sales manager of Woodland Hills Lincoln Mercury, objected to the law’s limitations on how long businesses can put up streamers--the little flags strung above car lots. Under the law, streamers can be displayed for 60 days, then must come down for 30 days before they can be put up for another 60 days.

Calling the streamers “tools of the trade,” Leber said, “It’s like telling a clown they can’t have balloons because the balloons detract too much from the scenery.” It costs the dealership $4,000 every time it takes the streamers down or put them back up, Leber added.

Kim, the car dealer who was prosecuted for putting up a hot air balloon, complained that the law hampers his ability to attract business. “They want a lot of taxes,” he said of the city. “But they don’t help you promote the business. It’s very unfair.”

Many merchants also have complained about the cost and inconvenience of having to comply with a requirement to obtain a $31 permit every time they want to put up a sign--even if it is just a small temporary window sign advertising a sale.

Robert Katz of Blue Wallscapes also complained about the restrictions on the painting of new signs on the outside of buildings. These signs are permitted if they are murals, defined under the law as having only a small amount of written advertising--less than 3% of the total sign.

“From an artistic standpoint, it’s a bad decision,” said Katz, whose firm painted many of the murals of athletes for Nike shoes during the 1984 Olympics. He said that many of the signs have been painted on run-down buildings, and “they are made more beautiful.”

Supporters of tougher standards favor a citywide law similar to those approved by the council for selected communities in Los Angeles, along San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, on Park Mile in the Wilshire District, Warner Center in Woodland Hills and Westwood Village. Those laws were adopted as part of the local development plans for those communities. Beverly Hills and Santa Monica also impose restrictions.