Title
December 15, 2011
To The President and Members of
The Council of the City of Philadelphia:
For the following reasons, I am returning herewith to your Honorable Body as disapproved Bill No. 110563, which was passed by Council at its session on December 1, 2011.
The bill would allow a very large wall wrap outdoor advertising sign, between seven thousand and ten thousand square feet in size, to be hung on any building in the area bounded by 6th, Spring Garden, 7th and Willow Streets. The bill also establishes rules regarding where on the building, and the size of the building on which, the sign can be placed. As a practical matter, the bill would be used to hang a sign on a building that houses the Electric Factory music venue and that is commonly known as the Electric Factory building.
I have disapproved this bill for several reasons. In my view, permissions given for stand-alone advertising signs, particularly very large signs, should be taken up on a City-wide, and not a property-by-property, basis. Moreover, those policy issues should be taken up with broader development goals in mind. This bill is very different from the legislation sponsored by Councilman DiCicco regarding the authorization of large-scale signs on Market East, where specific commitments regarding development of the properties where signs will be located are a condition of receipt of the permission to display large signs.
The end product of the four-year process of overhauling our Zoning Code is scheduled to be voted upon in Council today, marking a significant milestone in zoning reform in the City. As part of that broader process, a signs-control working group has, with the support and oversight of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, begun the process of preparing recommendations for rewriting the sign control portions of the Zoning Code. Recommendations from the working group are expected to be delivered in the spring of 2012, and if Council agrees to move forward with them, either as recommended or based on revisions made by Council, the new controls should become part and parcel of the new Zoning Code reform. The issue of extraordinarily large advertising signs, and potential conditions on the development and use of the associated properties as part of the authorization of such signs, should be taken up, as a City-wide matter, within the context of that process.
Moreover, the building at issue is within 660 feet of the Vine Street Expressway, which is part of the interstate highway system, thereby subjecting it to federal and state regulatory controls. If the City provides this authorization, it would allow a sign well in excess of the normal controls for advertising signs set forth in the Code. I have been advised by the City Solicitor that by doing so, the City would violate state and federal regulations requiring the City to maintain "effective control" of advertising in the near vicinity of federally-funded highways. Giving up effective control in this manner would jeopardize the City's receipt of federal highway funding administered by PennDOT. The Solicitor's opinion has been distributed to Council. A District
official for PennDOT has similarly advised Council regarding these issues and the potential ramifications for highway funding.
Because of my policy concerns about how the regulation of outdoor advertising should be handled generally, as well as the serious legal problems raised by the bill, including the potential loss of federal highway funding, I am returning to you disapproved Bill No. 110563.
Respectfully,
Michael A. Nutter,
Mayor
End