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Time is running out for billboards in city

A new agreement gives billboard companies until November 2015 to take their last billboards down.

By AARON SHAROCKMAN and LORRI HELFAND
Published January 26, 2006

	[Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford]
	Because of an agreement, billboards in Largo, like the one Bob Horning passes Wednesday on West Bay Drive, will be removed.

CLEARWATER - In a battle with billboard advertisers 20 years running, the city says this is good news:

The end is just 10 years away.

The city and two billboard advertisers have reached an agreement to remove five of the six remaining billboards along Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard and S Belcher Road, with the first to come down by June.

In Largo, city officials have an agreement of their own in place regarding billboards.

Largo's community development director, Mike Staffopoulos, said the city also has an agreement in place with billboard companies that stipulates that there will be no new billboards in the city of Largo.

"As they come down, they don't go back up and over a long period of time they would ultimately be phased out throughout the city," Staffopoulos said.

In April 1999, city officials and billboard advertisers reached an agreement to take down all billboards in the city's two redevelopment areas.

The Clearwater deal, approved by that town's City Council last week, settles a five-year-old lawsuit and a decades-old feud over whether Clearwater could order billboard signs pulled down. Billboard companies Viacom and Lamar will have their last billboards removed by Nov. 15, 2015, or face a $500-per-day fine, according to terms of the settlement.

That would leave just one privately owned billboard in Clearwater not located on U.S. 19.

City officials believe an agreement to remove that billboard, owned by Clearwater businessman Allan Stowell and located near the Village Inn on Gulf-to-Bay, can be reached as well.

"This puts finality on two cases that have been pending for a long time," said City Council member Bill Jonson, who is also an antibillboard activist. "Ten years seems like a long time, but it could have been a lot longer than that."

"The billboard folks are masters at delay," Jonson said.

An attorney for the billboard companies in the Clearwater case did not return a call for comment.

Under the terms of the settlement, one billboard will be removed by June 1. City officials believe it could be the one now at the southeast corner of Belcher and Gulf-to-Bay, though the settlement doesn't specify which one goes first.

The other four billboards will be removed by Nov. 1, 2012, through Nov. 1, 2015.

Viacom and Lamar had originally asked for a 30-year grace period, said assistant city attorney Leslie Dougall-Sides.

Since the city first began enforcing its billboard prohibition in 1992, more than 30 of the roadside advertisements have been removed, said Jeff Kronschnabl, the city's development and neighborhood services director.

The sign program has been one of the city's success stories and was even highlighted in its 2006 calendar distributed to residents.

"Sign blight is a real problem," Kronschnabl said. "For us to accomplish what we have is truly an amazing feat."

[Last modified January 26, 2006, 01:01:17]