New digital billboards may be coming to San Jose freeways — whether residents like it or not

In what could mark the end of a 36-year-old ban on new billboards across San Jose, large LED-illuminated signs may soon be built along Highway 101 despite staunch opposition by residents.

San Jose quietly unveiled plans this week to enter an agreement with the media company Clear Channel, allowing them to build two new electronic billboards — each measuring 1,000 square feet in size — along the highway on Mineta San Jose International Airport property.

The release of the draft proposal comes just four months after a city survey revealed that nearly 93% of San Jose residents opposed allowing new digital billboards to be built along freeways in the city.

Although the project is still under review and a public hearing has yet to be held, San Jose Airport Director John Aitken gave the idea his initial blessing in February 2020 — more than 17 months ago, according to airport spokesperson Demetria Machado. No mention of the billboard project, however, was made in the airport’s master plan in 2020.

The plan must still go through a full review, with the San Jose City Council making the final decision in the fall. The city’s Airports Commission will host the first public presentation on the proposal at its next meeting on August 9.

San Jose residents who have spent more than a year battling the city’s efforts to dismantle the decades-long ban on new billboards were baffled and blindsided by the new development.

“What we can say is that the city seems intent on ignoring the public and satisfying the billboard lobbyists,” said Les Levitt, a San Jose resident and co-founder of the grassroots organization No Digital Billboards in San Jose.

Both Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmember David Cohen, who serves as the council liaison for the Airport Commission, said in response to a reporter’s question that they had not yet seen the details of the project.

“I think I need to hear the staff report before I can inform opinions regarding this project,” Cohen said in a text. “I don’t have enough perspective at this point.”

San Jose has prohibited the construction of new billboards on city-owned land since 1972, and a broader citywide ban has been in place since 1985. At that time, city officials said outlawing new signage represented a “very strong commitment on the part of the city council to beautify the city.”

Proponents of the ban argue that the signs create visual blight, distract drivers and negatively affect the environment, surrounding wildlife and residents’ overall quality of life.

But in response to lobbying efforts from billboard companies, San Jose leaders have spent the last half-decade working to unravel the ban and add new flashy outdoor signage across the city. Supporters, however, say signage will bring additional revenue and a sense of vibrancy to the city.

San Jose leaders took their first significant step toward loosening the ban in September 2018 when the council voted to allow up to 22 new digital signs and billboards to be built on 17 city-owned sites. That plan included placing new signs on 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 at the airport.

San Jose gathered bids from billboard companies more than a year ago for new building-mounted signs, as well as two freeway-facing billboards on city-owned properties outside of the airport, but officials have not yet awarded any contracts.

San Jose downtown director Blage Zelalich said the billboards took a backseat during the pandemic. She hopes to bring contracts to the City Council for approval by the end of 2021, which would mean more signs would likely be coming to San Jose sometime in 2022.

A separate proposal by the city to allow private property owners to build up to 75 billboards on freeway-facing sites along Highway 87, Interstate 280 and Interstate 880 was dropped earlier this year after intense public scrutiny. Officials at that time opted to continue moving forward with their plans for new signs on public properties.

Meanwhile, the city has maintained a contract with Clear Channel for advertising signs within terminals and on bus stops at the airport since 2007. This latest proposal to add billboards on airport property would be included in that contract, which is why the city did not go through the typical bidding process for the project, according to Machado.

Machado added in an email that the locations for the new signs were “carefully selected to limit the impact to neighboring businesses and airport operations.”

In exchange for allowing Clear Channel to erect the billboards on airport property, the company will pay the airport at least $600,000 annually for the revenue it generates by selling advertising space on the billboards. At least 10% of the new advertising space would be provided free to the airport to display information about airport operations and services to drivers passing by, according to the proposal.

Clear Channel also would be required to take down two dilapidated, paper billboards somewhere in California — but not necessarily in San Jose — for each digital billboard that they erect, according to Machado.

This is a notable deviation from one of the main benefits San Jose leaders touted when advocating for new digital billboards. City officials previously vowed that they would require companies to take down at least four paper billboards within San Jose for each freeway-facing digital sign they put up — a move that they said would help reduce blight.

John Miller of No Digital Billboards in San Jose said this is another example of the city ditching its principles to satisfy billboard companies.

“Giving Clear Channel the option to remove signs in some distant California city totally violated everything the city has been saying,” he said. “It’s actually pretty outrageous.”