St. Pete may allow digital billboards

St. Petersburg is poised to join Tampa, Miami, Orlando and other Florida cities by allowing digital billboards that electronically change advertisements as motorists pass.

Today, the city council is scheduled to discuss zoning changes that would allow digital billboards. Mayor Bill Foster's staff is recommending the council go forward with the idea.

Foster is recommending approval despite objections from the city's Council of Neighborhood Associations, which says digital billboards would change the city's character.

The Federal Highway Administration is studying the effects of digital billboards on drivers' ability to pay attention to what they are doing.The administration's plan would drastically reduce the number of billboards citywide because two companies have agreed to take down many traditional billboards in order to erect digital ones.

If the council agrees to the zoning changes, Clear Channel Outdoor, the city's largest billboard advertiser, would take down 80 of its 128 signs in exchange for eight digital billboards.

And those eight digital billboards would replace traditional ones among the 48 that would be left, said Erica Smith, assistant city attorney.

The other, smaller company, CBS Outdoor, would take down 14 traditional billboards in exchange for erecting one digital one.

All the proposed digital billboards would be near the three interstate highways that go through the city, interstates 275, 375 and 175.

The digital billboards could not be more than about 14 feet in height and 48 feet in width and would have to be at least 2,500 feet apart.

The Council of Neighborhood Associations thinks the city could lose part of its identity if it allows them.

"St. Petersburg is unique," wrote Travis Jarman, who is on the land development and historical resources committee for the association, in a letter to the city.

"If Council permits frequently changing digital signs on our city's major access roads, it will degrade and change the character of our city and turn us into just another wide spot on the road, indistinguishable from the rest of the metropolitan landscape," Jarman wrote.