Public Invited to Speak About Digital Billboards

A public hearing on the proposal to build two digital billboards in Newark will be held at a planning commission meeting at 7 p.m.

The proposal is to build two digital billboards in Newark and a pylon sign that can be seen from nearby freeways, according to Community Development Director Terrence Grindall.

One digital sign would be located at 7015 Gateway Blvd. near Highway 84, while another LED sign and a pylon sign would sit alongside Interstate 880 on Mowry School Road.

The pair of digital billboards would be LED signs 48 feet wide and 14 feet high. The proposed pylon sign would replace a former auto mall identification sign and would be 85 feet tall and 29 feet wide, according to a study of the Clear Channel Newark Billboards Project. 

The pylon sign would include two 12-by-24-foot full-color LED displays above 34 feet of clearance and other signs above those, according to the study, which was drafted by Lamphier-Gregory, a San Francisco-based urban planning consultant firm.

The signs will “not include flashing, intermittent or moving lights, and shall not emit light that could obstruct or impair the vision of any driver,” the study says.

Grindall said the signs would be entirely paid for by Clear Channel Outdoor, an advertising company that has built nearly 1 million displays throughout the world, according to the company’s website.

“In return for (the city) allowing those billboards, the billboard company has to build that monument sign for the auto dealers,” Grindall said.

This move will also generate revenue for the city, he added. The revenue will be a contracted amount with the signs’ operator. That contract is not finalized, but Grindall said the yearly revenue is currently estimated at more than $100,000.

He added that if the signs are not used and the contract amount is not paid, the company would be required to remove the sign.

Similar signs are located throughout the Bay Area, including digital billboards seen along Interstate 880 by Oakland Airport, San Mateo Bridge and neighboring Union City.

Consideration of this proposal comes nearly two months after the city to allow non-site specific advertisements on signs.

Prior to this, signs seen from the freeways that run through Newark were only allowed to include a name of a building, person, firm, corporation or product.

The planning commission meets at city chambers on the sixth floor of .

For more information or to download the agenda, click here. To download the Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration of the project, click here.