Reviews on new bayside billboard mixed. ‘Visual pollution’ or evolving city skyline?

A new electronic billboard erected on the shore of Biscayne Bay just off the MacArthur Causeway has some residents accusing the city of Miami of green-flagging advertising contracts that obstruct waterfront views and drive down quality of life along the coast.

The large billboard, controlled by OUTFRONT Media, sits across the street from the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and greets anyone driving west into Miami from South Beach. Although city and county officials say the LED billboard went through the proper permitting channels before going up, neighborhood associations are concerned that they were left out of the loop and say the sign mars the area’s aesthetic.

James Torres, the president of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance, said that he has received several messages about the billboard since it went up in late May at the 1 Herald Plaza property once home to the Miami Herald.

“They’re not happy about it. They don’t understand why an electronic billboard is being placed there,” Torres said. “They think it’s going to become a Vegas-style type of billboard.”

George Myers, a Venetian Islands resident who says he can see the billboard from his house, said he considers electronic billboards in particular to be “visual pollution,” echoing complaints Andres Althabe, the head of the Biscayne Neighbors Alliance, said he received in recent days. Myers’ fear is that without a plan for limiting the construction of billboards, eventually the coastline will become oversaturated with them.

“When you’re approaching from the east toward downtown, you see this giant billboard in front of you,” Myers, 67, said. “It just doesn’t have much forethought.”

The city of Miami issued a building permit for the billboard on March 26. On April 20, county commissioners passed an ordinance recasting 1 Herald Plaza, the 14-acre bayfront property sandwiched between the MacArthur and Venetian causeways, under the county’s jurisdiction for billboard approval, according to Tere Florin, the communications director for the county Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources. But the city permit — already issued a month earlier by Julia Cerrato, the city mural and billboard coordinator — still carried over.

Civic groups swing into action

Some Downtown Miami, Edgewater, and Venetian Islands residents are planning to reach out to city representatives, in hopes the billboard does not herald more of what they see as over-commercialization of the shoreline.

Torres said that his group, in partnership with Althabe’s Biscayne Neighbors Alliance, will be digging into the permitting process for the billboard and asking Commissioner Ken Russell why the alliances were not consulted on the sign before it went up. John Heffernan, the deputy communications director for the city, confirmed officials did not consult with neighborhood groups prior to issuing the permit.

Russell, the commissioner for the district that houses the billboard, seemed sympathetic to Torres’ and Myers’ overarching concerns.

“While the billboard is properly permitted, it does highlight a need for revision of the types of structures that trigger the requirement to complete this portion of the Baywalk,” he said in a statement to the Herald. “This property is one of the last and largest missing pieces of public waterfront access that will be Miami’s greatest amenity.”

Still, Peter Ehrlich, the head of Scenic Miami, an anti-billboard advocacy group, said city commissioners should be doing more to prevent new billboards from being constructed at all.

“Elected officials and government bureaucrats should be doing everything they can to make Miami look better,” Ehrlich said. “Allowing billboards to ruin our visual environment is a fast way to ruin Miami’s reputation.”

Other locals seem less concerned. PV Gohel, an Edgewater resident, said electronic billboards are “not something people should be that bothered by.” Gohel said some residents tend to overreact to new technology in their neighborhood.

“I have a direct bay-facing view so I noticed the change all of a sudden, so that was kind of weird,” said Mik Eriksson, whose balcony looks over the billboard. “But you know, it’s a city skyline, it’s always going to be changing. It kind of is what it is at some point.”

The contract with City of Miami

The billboard is part of a larger ongoing agreement between Miami and OUTFRONT Media, which brings in $175,000 in annual revenue to the city, according to Heffernan. OUTFRONT is an advertising company that owns half a million display boards nationwide.

As part of the deal to get approval from the city for the LED sign on the shore of Biscayne Bay, permitting documents the city gave to the Herald show that the advertising company agreed to remove four existing, non-electronic signs across Miami — two in Allapattah, one in Little River, and a fourth in East Little Havana.

The billboard permits indicate the site as “the intersection of 1 Herald Plaza and the North side of I-395.” OUTFRONT contracted with Florida’s Department of Transportation, which controls the causeway, public records show, but the leg of the billboard appears to be planted on 1 Herald Plaza. The Genting Group currently owns the highly valued property, after the Malaysian hospitality, cruise, and gambling conglomerate shocked South Florida in 2011 by purchasing the waterfront lot for $236 million.

Since that purchase, the Genting Group, which intended to construct a gambling resort at the site, has run into financial distress and legislative difficulty, unable to successfully lobby Florida legislators into loosening gambling laws. Surrounded by a high fence that warns against trespassing, the lot has for years been a large open and empty space, with now one exception: the OUTFRONT billboard.

Ads displayed on the billboard have so far ranged in content from the Adrienne Arsht Center to local TV stations. Among the ads are ones for the Genting Group’s own Resorts World resorts.

The Genting Group, through spokesperson Dan Bank, declined to answer whether the group had leased a portion of its property to the city or directly to OUTFRONT Media. The Genting Group name is absent from any of the permitting documents the city disclosed to the Herald.

OUTFRONT did not respond to multiple requests for comment.