STATE REJECTS DIGITAL BILLBOARD PLANNED FOR SPOT IN LEMON GROVE

A digital billboard that was scheduled to go up on city-owned property on the 3600 block of Olive Street near state Route 94 in Lemon Grove will need to find a new home.

Plans for the 65-foot-tall sign were approved by the city in October 2019 and submitted by Outfront Media, Inc. on behalf of the city to the Caltrans’ Outdoor Advertising division.

Caltrans, which regulates the placement of outdoor advertising displays visible from highways, rejected the Olive Street location.

The city contracted with Outfront, an advertising company, two years ago to remove four static billboards and lease the area on Olive for the new billboard. Outfront is covering the initial construction costs, estimated to be about $500,000. The company is also budgeting about $50,000 per year to maintain the billboard.

The City Council last week approved a new location for an outdoor billboard at 7752-56 North Ave. and will keep its previously approved agreement with Outfront that it could construct the billboard at no cost in exchange for an annual revenue for the city over the next 20 years. The billboard is expected to be up and working next spring.

An Aug. 17 staff report from Public Works Director Mike James said that Lemon Grove thought it was in its rights to move forward with erecting a billboard on the Olive Street site as it is on city-owned land; on a local public street within the limits of Lemon Grove’s municipal boundaries; and is neither a counted “state highway,” a “county highway,” or a road listed as part of the National Highway System.

But Caltrans told city staff the original location of the billboard was rejected because it fell “within the right-of-way” of a highway. Caltrans performs regular reviews of freeways and highways identified on the National Highway System to enforce outdoor advertising requirements under the Federal Highway Beautification Act and the state’s Outdoor Advertising Act.

City staff worked with Outfront on another location it hopes will be approved — a vacant parcel on the west side of the city’s realignment project along North Avenue. The location is on city-owned property, has an assessor parcel number assigned to it, “and was not, nor will it be, a location where vehicles or pedestrians may freely travel,” James wrote.

Outfront told the city on June 18 that the pre-application for the new site on North Avenue has already been approved. James wrote that “there is an extremely high level of confidence that a full application will be approved by the ODA.”

When it got City Council approved two years ago, Lemon

Grove staff said the city can make $325,000 in the first year of operation and close to $9 million over two decades through advertising opportunities. Nearing the end of the 20-year agreement, the city and Outfront staff will meet to discuss its continuation.

The new billboard will be larger than the previous one, growing from 14-feet-by-48-feet to 20-feetby-60-feet.

Outfront will complete the full application and submit it to Caltrans. The review takes about 90 days. The city anticipates construction to start in January with a late April date for the billboard to be activated.