Mayor Will Allow 3D Urban Billboards In Center City

Mayor Michael Nutter has signed a controversial deal that will allow for two three-dimensional “urban billboards” in Center City. The displays, which were proposed some time ago, will mark a whole new experience in city advertising – a revolution that doesn’t please many detractors.

As depicted in an artist’s rendering, the UEDs would tower over the street and provide digital advertising.

The billboards are formally known as Urban Experiential Displays, or UEDs. The UEDs will take the form of immense animated shapes. They will tower five stories high. Two signs were approved, one for outside the Reading Terminal Market and one near the Convention Center. The signs will be the work of Catalyst Outdoors, a Malvern-based advertising company.

It took no small amount of negotiating for Nutter to make peace with the City Council on the subject of the UEDs and how and where they would be displayed. The initial legislation was put forward by Councilman Mark Squilla and almost immediately faced pushback from public interest groups like the Center City Residents Association and Scenic Philadelphia, which advocates for green public spaces. The crux of the resistance revolved around the billboards’ unsightliness and the fact that they will generate big profits for Catalyst, and little for the city.

Nutter didn’t veto the bill authorizing the signs, but neither would he approve it as written. He required amendments to the original legislation, which were quickly delivered and signed into law. Among those amendments: the Streets Department was put in charge of the signs, and the Planning Commission must make recommendations to the Art Commission on all proposals. Catalyst must also pay $5.2 million per display towards city nonprofits as a concession towards the signs’ erection.