Neil Bell just interviewed Grace Outdoor owners Hal and Diana Stevenson on the Bell Board Podcast.  Some highlights.

Where Grace Outdoor comes from

I can’t not say it — we’ve got a strong faith. “Grace” is the one word. In the billboard business you use as few words as possible, and if you’ve got one word that sums up what the Bible teaches, it’s “grace.”  We had several names as we trekked across the country. We were even “California Outdoor Advertising” at one time, and also “Modern Outdoor Displays” — we were “the Mod Squad,” which ain’t right for obvious reasons.  When I needed someone to help me operate, I brought my brother Danny in…He’s my older brother, five years older, and he doesn’t have the same faith viewpoint…He was always ribbing me. He just said one day, “You know, you should just call it Grace” — he thought he was giving me a jab. And I said, “One word: Grace. Hey Danny, thanks, man — I think that’s what we’ll do.”

A construction surprise in Spartanburg/Greenville

We built a sign and hit a 36-inch water main. We had done all our 811 checks, but it turned out where the sign was located was in an old right-of-way. You couldn’t tell it was a right-of-way, and the water company didn’t mark it for the 811 check because all their stuff was under that right-of-way. We didn’t know that. And it was a little geyser shooting right up out there — “Oh my God.” There were ten guys standing around watching one guy down in the hole. We had to reimburse them for fixing it, and it took about half of our profit out of the entire deal just to pay for the water main repair.

Persistence in permitting

We had to go in front of the Board of Zoning Appeals on a particular permit and we’d been working on it for three and a half years. We did finally get it…There was no good reason not to give us a permit based on the way the ordinance was written, but they just sat on it. So then you think, “OK, I’ll get a lawyer and sue them.” But it doesn’t do anything — all it does is stretch it out further…We bugged them enough until they finally said, “OK, we’re going to turn it down, for these reasons.” And the reasons just didn’t make sense. So we appealed to the Board of Zoning Appeals. It’s never happened to me that we won at that stage. You’ve got to go through appeals before you can sue in court to get an objective party to rule on the language. Even our attorney was telling us, “Well, we’re not going to win.” And then we won because it was so clear-cut — so ridiculous…An adjunct professor from Wofford…listened to our attorney and how the ordinance was laid out, and he said, “I just don’t see how the staff could come to the conclusion that they came to.” The other board members kind of rallied around that. We won 4 to 1. It was just one of those wow moments.

You can watch the 46 minute interview below.

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