Three Weeks After Supergraphics Ruling, Different Buildings Have Different Responses
Eric Richardson
[Flickr]
NBA Finals and the E3 convention would typically be prime sales time for the walls of the Hotel Figueroa, but they've been bare for more than a month.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Millions of basketball fans have their eyes on Downtown Los Angeles tonight as the Lakers try to extend their NBA Finals series with the Boston Celtics and move within one game of the team's 16th championship.
As has been the case throughout the Lakers' playoff run, aerial shots show the neighborhood around Staples Center missing one of its most iconic features: the massive ads on the side of the Hotel Figueroa.
While that lucrative spot has been empty for more than a month, other buildings continue to show their supergraphics three weeks after the city won a decisive victory in its fight to regulate the large graphics.
SkyTag, the company responsible for the Statue of Liberty graphics that popped up at the end of 2008, last week filed an appeal of that decision, made by a panel of judges in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In its request for the court to rehear the appeal "en banc," the company alleges that the panel erred on its interpretation of multiple issues.
Up the street from Hotel Figueroa, a new supergraphic for the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops was installed this week on the side of a parking garage between 7th and 8th. That ad replaced a "Mannywood" graphic that had hung for more than a year.
As for Hotel Figueroa, CBS Outdoor's 2008 decision to replace the building's painted mural ads with vinyl was unpopular with Downtowners. It was equally as unpopular with the city, which promptly cited the structure for a code violation in March of 2009. The painted murals were legal, approved in April of 2000, but the vinyl ads were not.
Rich Alossi on June 15, 2010, at 09:10PM – #1
I wonder if those video game/Mannywood ads are legal or not.
Jamie DeFrisco on June 15, 2010, at 09:46PM – #2
I liked the ads they have on the Figueroa Hotel. I don't mind ads as long as they aren't excessive and don't cover significant architectural parts of a building.
I enjoy looking at ads instead of just blank sides of buildings. I also enjoy the way they make the area look more busy and maybe compact.
However there does need to be a limit.
Amy on June 16, 2010, at 01:27AM – #3
I've always liked the ads on the Hotel Figueroa as well. I don't remember the 2008 vinyl ones.
If the city is going to regulate it, does this mean they haven't approved one lately? Or is this a statement by Hotel Figueroa, leaving it blank because they don't like this decision?
Did the buildings used to make 100% of the profits off the ads and does this ruling change that?
Eric Richardson (@blogdowntown) on June 16, 2010, at 08:10AM – #4
Amy: CBS Outdoor is the company running the advertising at Hotel Figueroa. They're the ones who made the switch to vinyl, and I would conjecture that they're currently hoping to get the right to keep using it since the ads are so much cheaper to install and change out than the painted ones are. Where the painted ads used to run for months at a time, the vinyl ones were changed out every few weeks.
Guest on June 16, 2010, at 10:06AM – #5
In the distant past, all billboard were painted by skilled craft people. When the first billboards went up at the Hotel Figueroa, they were painted and intuitively the general public perceived them as Art, and they did have artistic merit.
The first “Apple Ad” had the three Laker Centers…Kareem, Chamberlain, and Shaq with a very small Apple Logo. The following ads were similar, CBS Outdoor crossed the line when they started to advertise toilet tissue.
At some point in future these skilled “Billboard Painters” will be recognized as “real artists” because a computer cannot yet deal with the parallax, the way the human eye view reality.
2OX OK TK Nagano
Downtown Cowboy on June 16, 2010, at 10:08AM – #6
I'm so glad for the ruling. The proliferation of giant ads on the sides of buildings was getting out of hand. It really is a form of pollution. I really hate the ones on the new Ritz Carlton. They look like someone has slapped bumper stickers on a new Rolls Royce
Guest on June 16, 2010, at 06:03PM – #7
I'm just going to build my 100-story tower out of LEDs and Lite-Brites.
Brigham Yen on June 17, 2010, at 12:23AM – #8
I agree that the ads on the new Ritz Carlton looks like crap.
philip on July 01, 2010, at 09:19PM – #9
this building looks like crap without ads, someone please put something back on those walls. i'll pitch in $250 for someone to paint something on it, that's how ugly the bare walls are to me!