The Providence City Council's Committee on Ordinances will hold a public hearing Monday, Nov. 9, at 5:30 p.m. on a petition to let owners of nonconforming billboards swap static faces for electronic signs, with the removal of other billboards as the trade. The petition, filed by attorney Dylan Conley of Rhode Island Land Use Law, would add a Section F to Section 2005 of the zoning ordinance. The hearing is in the City Council Chamber at City Hall, 25 Dorrance St., according to the committee's agenda packet.
The petition as revised would require that at least twice the digital face's square footage be removed through decommissioning other billboard faces the applicant owns or operates in the city. The new sign would have to face Interstate 95, sit in a commercial or industrial district and be at least 250 feet from residential lots. It would need approval from the Rhode Island Department of Transportation and could not exceed the area of the face it replaces. The revised text drops the original petition's requirement of an annual mitigation fee paid to the city.
The City Plan Commission considered the petition July 28, according to the staff report, and in a July 30 letter to the committee reported a vote to recommend approval with changes. The letter lists five commissioners voting aye and no opposing votes. Commissioners found that billboard-for-electronic-sign trades are good planning practice in concept but that the proposal's replacement ratio is far too low. The commission's version would require removing at least 10 times the electronic face's area, including structures and footings, before installation, and would strike the payment to the city. The planning department's report said the payment likely amounts to contract zoning, which the state zoning enabling act does not explicitly allow.
The planning department's July report said Lamar Advertising Company owns or operates about 95 percent of outdoor advertising inventory in the greater Providence area, and that it was unclear how many signs the change would cover. An Oct. 11 resident letter in the packet cites what it calls the petitioner's own estimate that a 2-to-1 ratio would retire only 12 to 20 signs, against about 161 billboards in the city. That figure is the resident's characterization and is not verified. It cites Reservoir/West End, Washington Park and downtown as areas with much of the city's billboard inventory.
The packet includes written opposition from residents, a Ward 10 council candidate and the group Scenic America. Most of it dates from September and was written about the original petition, before the planning commission's report and the petitioner's substitute. Earlier letters raised the lack of neighborhood notice under administrative review, whether removals could occur in a different ward from new digital faces, the lack of a definition of what it means to face an interstate highway in the original wording, and the effect of lighting on migrating birds.
The agenda lists the petition as continued from the committee's Oct. 13 hearing. The petitioner's substitute would let old structures stand up to 90 days after the electronic sign is finished; the commission would require their removal, including footings, first. A second continued item, a petition from Jeffrey Mark Audet, owner of JC131 Realty, LLC, would rezone various properties from M-MU to M-1 and allow storage containers for permanent storage if they are not stacked. Written testimony was due by 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6; residents can still speak at the hearing. The agenda says all items are scheduled for discussion and possible vote or other action.
