As newcomers keep coming and the Wasatch Front’s latest growth spurt fills in its urban cracks, the public is noticing some strange standoffs between billboards and development.
The seemingly wacky wrangle on the southwest corner of Salt Lake City’s 300 West and 500 South — where a huge outdoor sign stands flush against luxury apartment windows in the new Post District — could be the perfect emblem.
Except there are others, including one just like it around the corner on 600 South. There are even more, in fact, blocks away in many directions.
Glance again and view two gigantic rows of metal billboard towers standing six stories high over the Post District along both stretches of what the city calls its Grand Boulevards, those familiar segments of 500 South and 600 South that ferry motorists to and from Interstate 15 and the city center.
In fact, once you start seeing billboards wedged into so many spots on the region’s rapidly developing main arterials, it’s almost as if you can’t stop seeing them.
Billboards in some places are now sandwiched on several sides by new residential or commercial buildings going up in the urban core, where the residential population is soaring and multistory apartments are rising.
Owners of these hard-sought outdoor advertising spots say they are in demand, serve an invaluable public purpose and are reliably lucrative in today’s fragmented markets for advertising.
Though others see them as urban eyesores, billboard owners point out the signs also enjoy long-standing property rights, flowing from outright ownership of the ground beneath or through easements or ground leases. In many cases, these agreements follow the property and guarantee clear views by passing vehicles, covering multiple billboard faces in multiple directions.
Along some of the hottest transit corridors — including 400 South and 900 South — zoning rules allow new apartment and commercial buildings to be taller, except for many with billboard easements on their roofs, such as Stoneground Italian Kitchen, 249 E. 400 South. Those are properties are often capped by easement restrictions.
In some cases, choice outdoor advertising venues — like one near East High School along 1300 East and 700 South — are located in well-trafficked residential areas and occupy full lots, where much-needed housing could be built.
According to Scenic Utah, a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit seeking to protect the state’s scenic beauty from “visual pollution” due to billboards, said that developing these spots with single-family homes or apartments instead would also help boost tax revenues.
Same goes for some commercial nodes where the city is trying to encourage new retail shops or other businesses. In some instances, as with the Central Ninth neighborhood, billboards are hindering high-opportunity development that could otherwise take advantage of proximity to mass transit, according to Scenic Utah and others.
There are west-side neighborhoods and others in Millcreek, South Salt Lake and neighboring cities, where properties designated for housing or other uses instead host footings for billboards that stand tall enough to be seen on major highways.
In other locales, billboards obstruct what Scenic Utah calls “postcard views” of the Wasatch Range as they vie for sightlines from residential areas.
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
