Billboard battle in the 'burbs
An advertising company has applied to put up 21 digital billboards along high-profile thoroughfares in three Delaware County townships — Haverford, Springfield and Marple — with hopes of overturning prohibitions against billboards.
Bartkowski Investment Group is challenging the communities’ zoning codes as it seeks to grow its business by filling what it sees as a gap in advertising sites sought by national and regional companies. The Delaware County signs are only the beginning. Bartkowski wants to accumulate an undisclosed number of billboard sites throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, contending available inventory isn’t accommodating existing demand.
Thaddeus J. Bartkowski III formed the Lewes, Del.-based investment group, of which he has the majority interest, as the vehicle to spearhead the effort. Bartkowski, 28, is an entrepreneur who grew up in Villanova and attended Villanova University. While at the school, he formed AdSmart Outdoor Advertising. He later started another company called Ignition Media Group, which was a digital-sign advertising firm that amassed a network of displays at delicatessen counters in 434 grocery stores. He sold Ignition three years ago, netting $2.5 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
Now Bartkowski, who lives in Chester County, has moved onto his next venture and believes he has hit on a niche market in advertising. Advertisers have been limited to outdoor billboards on major highways and some roads, such as the Blue Route, don’t permit them. As sprawl has taken hold, travel along certain secondary roads has increased to where it has generated enough viewers to support billboards, Bartkowski said. These byways also have strong demographics based on income, jobs and other factors. The Blue Route is subject to a special exemption prohibiting billboards, but most major highways have no such restrictions.
What makes these secondary roads even more valuable is these travelers are being reached in areas where they can make buying decisions and act upon them, he said. To reach these consumers, Bartkowski wants to get approval for double-sided digital billboards that can show five to eight different ads that would be continuously looped on each side of the board.
“These are not your traditional billboards,” he said.
The signs are designed to blend as much possible into the surrounding environment and don’t have characteristics, such as external illumination and catwalks, that make typical billboards standout, he said. “We’re very concerned with aesthetics.”
The billboards will have the potential to benefit townships, which will have the use of a certain amount of ad space where they can post township news or alerts, or sublease that space for a fee that will translate into revenues.
Bartkowski knows he’s in for a battle. “The reality is when you say billboard people have a predisposition against them,” he said.
The idea of placing billboards of any kind along arterials such as Lancaster Avenue in Haverford, where Bartkowski wants to put five of the signs, has raised the hackles of not only Haverford township officials and residents but also in neighboring Lower Merion township.
Jeff Heilmann, a Haverford commissioner, has received upwards of 60 e-mails from citizens in both towns who are concerned over the issue. Lower Merion officials have also been inundated, said Lower Merion Commissioner Scott Zelov. It even prompted an unprecedented move to relocate a Haverford zoning meeting regarding the billboards to bigger quarters at the Lower Merion Township building. That meeting is scheduled for April 2.
“I haven’t gotten one positive e-mail,” Heilmann said. “There are people who are really against it.”
Two of the proposed signs in Haverford would be on Lancaster Avenue at Old Lancaster Road and Penn Street near the Acme Market. The others would go at Route 3 at Lawrence Road, Glendale Road and Washington Avenue. They would stand 17 feet tall on a newly constructed pole that will hold a sign that is 48 feet wide and 14 feet long. None of the signs in the three townships Bartkowski has filed applications in would stand on rooftops.
Heilmann worried about the safety hazard the signs could pose. The 600 block of Lancaster Avenue is already a “really bad stretch of road,” he said. “It’s already horrible for accidents.”
The billboards would give motorists one more thing to distract them, taking their eyes off the road and potentially causing more accidents, Heilmann said.
Both Heilmann and Zelov believe the billboards would disrupt the revitalization efforts under way in the Central Bryn Mawr Business District.
“I strongly oppose the billboards and think it’s a terrible idea,” Zelov said. “Lower Merion has been working very hard on improving the Bryn Mawr Business District.” A master plan and village zoning has been put in place, he said. “I think and my colleagues generally think it’s going to be a visual disturbance and travel safety hazard that would be very much counterproductive.”
Signs also would be located along Route 3, Summit Avenue and Sproul Road in Marple and seven proposed billboards would be placed along Baltimore Pike in Springfield, among other locations.
Bartkowski and his zoning attorney, Carl Primavera of Klehr Harrison, are confident the townships will eventually be forced to grant the billboards.
“Pennsylvania law doesn’t allow the prohibition of lawful uses,” Primavera said. “You have to make allowance for outdoor advertising. You can’t be snobbish or elitist. Exclusionary ordinances aren’t enforceable.”
In other words, an ordinance that bars fast-food restaurants, big-box retailers or billboards, isn’t supported by state Supreme Court rulings, which have leaned toward pro-property rights. Signs are already allowed in towns by on-site users, he said. For example, the only difference between a car dealership sign and the billboard is the dealership is on-premises and with the billboard, the message is about an off-site firm, Primavera said.
So long as the signs are properly located in commercial areas, towns need to update zoning ordinances and give them the go-ahead, Primavera said. The alternative would be for the towns to battle the issue in the courts, which costs time and money.