Bucktown Group Speaks Against Billboard Plan

When it comes to one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's recently approved plans, an official from a local organization wants his opposition heard.

A Chicago City Council committee questioned but ultimately approved a proposal Monday to lease city property to a private advertising firm that will install digital billboards along local expressways. The issue led Bucktown Community Organization President Steve Jensen to write a letter to Emanuel voicing disapproval of the idea.

According to Jensen, the organization's position comes not from the political debate surrounding the privatization deal, but the way the five proposed billboards along the Kennedy Expressway may affect Bucktown residents, particularly because of screen brightness and light pollution.

"The political issue of the privatization and all that stuff is lost on us, simply because we're the neighborhood group and we're directly affected by the brightness," Jensen said. "It doesn't matter to us whether they're privately or publicly owned. What matters to us is the impact that they have on the neighborhood."

Jensen called the amount of light generated by such LED signs "gaudy" and "horrendous," citing the billboard that's currently in place near the intersection of Ashland Avenue and Cortland Street as an example of one that's already causing problems for residents.

"We have a few other digital signs in the neighborhood currently, and the owners of those signs have really not listened to us when we've asked them to turn down the intensity at night," he said. "If they're at full brightness at 12 noon on a summer day, it doesn’t really affect anybody. But when it's dark out—like it is now at four o'clock in the afternoon, or on a nice summer night—and you can see those billboards for miles away, that amount of light pollution, and the light that it casts on our neighboring houses over there by the Kennedy Expressway, that's just unacceptable."

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In addition to the light pollution, Jensen said the organization takes issue with the fact that the billboards are likely to reduce nearby home and property values. 

"We're also viewing the signs as a tax, that these signs are removing value from the neighborhood and that, in effect, is a tax on those who are directly underneath or across the street or behind these signs," he said, earlier stating that some may affect homeowners' views of the city skyline.

While Emanuel's proposal is likely to pass when the full council votes on it next week and Jensen understands there isn't much he or the BCO can do about it, he said the organization felt that it was important to speak up.

"We would just like to politely have on the record that we oppose these signs," Jensen said. "There's really not a lot we can do. We're a fairly large neighborhood group, but we don't wield any influence beyond the one vote of our alderman."

Alderman Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward) was one of only three city council members to oppose the proposal in Monday's committee vote.