On the December 16 City Council meeting will be a revised sign ordinance that allows multiple electronic digital (LED) signs in Richmond. My informal surveys indicate a strong preference from Richmond residents not to allow these signs. The Planning Commission is waiting until after this ordinance is passed to take up the matter of the illegal LED sign at Pacific East Mall. See:
Readers Prefer Removal of Pacific East Mall LED Sign, March 19, 2014 LED Billboard at Pacific East Mall, March 17, 2014
On November 13, 2014, the Planning Commission voted 3-2 not to include proliferation of digital signs in the ordinance, but City staff is still pushing an ordinance that would allow at least three more digital signs. For the entire staff report on Item J-1, see:
Support for more digital signs appears to come mostly from the Hilltop Community, some of whom have come to believe that the addition of a digital sign at Hilltop will revive the flagging retail activity at Hilltop Mall. I do not believe a digital sign will help Hilltop Mall, which has a combination of challenges, including that fact that it represents a nearly 40-year old obsolete retail model that is experiencing similar failures across the United States, and it is in receivership.
I am going to make the economic revival of Hilltop, including a successful future for what is now Hilltop Mall, a priority of my upcoming term as mayor, but I do not see an LED sign as a necessary component of that revival.
Those in favor of such a sign argue that it will draw drivers off I-80 who will eagerly spend money in local businesses and that the City can make as much as $200,000 a year as a part of such an arrangement while getting some public service advertising. The fact is that such a sign would largely advertise goods and services that have nothing to do with Richmond, such as airlines, automobiles and liquor, and there is no evidence that it would draw drivers whizzing past at 70 MPH into Hilltop to shop.
Above, typical advertising on Pacific East Mall LED sign