S.J. commission blasts city’s billboard plan
‘This project needs to be put on the back burner and then never surface again’
San Jose residents who want to keep the city’s decades-old ban on new billboards intact got a boost last week after the city’s airport commission overwhelmingly voted against adding two new Led-illuminated signs along Highway 101.
“This project needs to be put on the back burner and then never surface again,” said San Jose airport Commissioner Catherine Hendrix. “We have a beautiful city, and if we allow two, we’re going to have to allow a lot more.”
Under the proposal, which the City Council is expected to make a final decision on later this month, airport officials have requested permission to enter an agreement with the media company Clear Channel, allowing it to build two new electronic billboards — each measuring 1,000 square feet in size — along the highway on Mineta San Jose International Airport property.
If approved, city officials anticipate that the project will bring in an additional $490,000 a year for the airport — a boost of just .3% to its annual budget. The airport also would be allowed to use 10% of the advertising time on the billboards to promote airport services.
Rebekah Bray, the airport’s senior property manager, said this type of publicity and revenue was “severely needed” to drive awareness and “remain
competitive against our two neighboring airports.”
Most airport commissioners, however, questioned the extent of those perceived benefits.
The commission on Nov. 8 voted 7-2 against the project, citing poor transparency, a lack of benefits for the city and the public and concern that this proposal would open the floodgates for more billboards across the city — all in the face of serious pushback from residents.
“I just think this is kind of, almost for better words, really a sad state of affairs if this is what we’ve come down to to get some money,” said Commissioner Lisa Marie Smith. “And it’s not really a lot.”
Although the deal with Clear Channel has been in the works for nearly several years and San Jose Airport Director John Aitken already gave it his initial blessing in February
2020, the general public and airport commission were not made aware of it until earlier this year.
A 2020 update made to the airport’s master plan did not mention the digital billboard proposal. The airport also did not go through a typical bidding process for the project because it intends to tack it on to a contract that it has had with Clear Channel since 2007 for advertising on airport property, including inside terminals and on bus stops.
“I have a real problem with transparency and the process as a whole,” said airport Chair Dan Connolly, who voted against the plan.
Robert Hencken, one of two commissioners who voted in support of the billboards, argued that even the small economic benefit seemed worthwhile, as well as the potential for the billboards to help separate San
Jose’s Mineta Airport from other nearby airports.
The commission’s vote comes amid a heated battle that’s been ongoing for more than a year between San Jose residents and city officials over the merits of ending the city’s 36-yearold ban on new billboards.
John Miller, a co-founder of the grassroots organization No Digital Billboards in San Jose, called the airport commission’s vote this week a “real victory” for his group and their supporters.
“These billboards needed to be rejected,” he said. “Many of the arguments in favor of constructing them were not convincing.”
San Jose has prohibited the construction of new billboards on city-owned land since 1972 and has banned them citywide since 1985. When originally enacting the ban, city officials called it a “very
strong commitment on the part of the City Council to beautify the city.”
Proponents of the ban — then and now — argue that new billboards will distract drivers, create visual blight and adversely affect the environment and residents’ quality of life. Earlier this year, a city survey found that nearly 93% of San Jose residents opposed allowing new digital signs to be built along freeways in the city.
Yet in response to lobbying from billboard companies, San Jose leaders have been working to unravel the ban for the past decade. Those in support of adding new signs say they would bring additional revenue to the city and help revitalize the downtown area.
In 2018, the San Jose City Council took its first significant step toward loosening the ban when it voted to allow up to 22 new digital signs and billboards to be built on 17 city-owned sites. That plan called for allowing new signs to be tacked on to a handful of city-owned downtown buildings, such as the Hammer Theatre, the Center for Performing Arts and parking garages, and adding new digital billboards on up to eight freeway-facing public properties, including some at the airport. City officials have gathered bids from billboard companies for those projects but have not yet awarded any contracts.
Earlier this year, city leaders also were considering a second phase in which they would give private property owners the ability to build up to 75 billboards on freeway-facing sites along Highway 87, Interstate 280 and Interstate 880, but they dropped the plan after intense public scrutiny.
Community members hope that the airport commission’s vote will help persuade the City Council to abandon all the billboard proposals.
“Special interests should not trump public interest,” said San Jose resident Les Levitt. “The airport and the city don’t belong in the billboard business.”
The San Jose City Council is expected to make a final decision on the airport billboard proposal at its meeting Nov. 30. Council member David Cohen, who serves as liaison to the airport commission, said Monday night that he was not yet ready to take a public stance on the matter. Meanwhile, Council member Raul Peralez said Tuesday that he intends to ask the city to seek bids from other outdoor advertising companies before awarding the contract to Clear Channel.