Pittsburgh, Lamar Advertising bicker in court over Mt. Washington billboard

Legal arguments reignited Thursday over the large Lamar Advertising sign looming over Pittsburgh from atop Mt. Washington.

A Pittsburgh attorney argued that Lamar Advertising has operated a “blatantly illegal” sign for more than three years, while representatives from Lamar contended the city is violating its due process, property and free speech rights by blocking attempts to modernize the landmark billboard.

Attorneys for both sides appeared before Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court on Thursday in a hearing on Pittsburgh’s appeal of a 2018 Allegheny County court decision that ruled the city Zoning Board of Adjustment erred in ordering Lamar to remove the sign that has existed for 90 years.

Commonwealth Court judges could take up to several months before issuing a decision.

Lawrence H. Baumiller, an assistant city solicitor, said Lamar in 2016 illegally replaced a neon sign with a vinyl sign in violation of zoning regulations. The controversial sign is currently an advertisement for Sprint.

“Under the zoning ordinance itself, it explicitly states that a non-electronic sign cannot replace an electronic sign and vice versa without the explicit provisions of the zoning ordinances being met, and in this case, this is a zoning district that’s called Grandview Public Realm,” Baumiller said. “Advertising signs are not permitted. The original sign was there simply because it was put there before the zoning ordinance was even in effect.”

Baumiller also argued that advertising space on the new sign, measuring 7,200 square feet, is nearly 10 times larger what the city permits on any billboard.

Downtown attorney Jonathan Kamin, who represents Lamar, said the company spent years meeting with the city, community groups and other stakeholders to come up with a plan for updating the electronic sign and spent more than $1 million on engineers and other costs as part of that effort.

He said the company was planning to spend $7 million on upgrades and gave the city a $72,000 check for a permit to do the work. The city “sat on it” for years, Kamin said. He said the city has never cashed the check.

“Once it became clear to us that we could not go ahead and modernize the sign as we requested, we went ahead and put up a vinyl advertisement on it,” Kamin said. “What we were cited for, and the only thing in front of the zoning board, was that we needed a permit to put up that vinyl sign.”

Through the whole process, the city has violated Lamar’s constitutional rights, Kamin said.

“What the zoning board did was outrageous,” he said. “It went ahead and eviscerated 90 years of property rights, saying that we had abandoned the sign by somehow putting content on the sign.”