Billboard Insider is running an interview series with Fairmount Outdoor President Billy Tolson.  Billy has talked about finding his way from child acting to the out of home industry.  Today Billy talks about what’s makes a good billboard lease.

What are your out of home companies?

Fairmount is the operating company, and Maple holds our ground leases and shared sites. Both around since 1984, started by Ray Tolson III. Then I started my own shingle many years ago called Reata Outdoor, and that’s what I’m focused on these days. Our background in real estate development has always been a big part of how we aproach the OOH business. It opened the door to relationships with commercial brokers, property owners, and raw land developers, and it taught me to look at a site as a real estate deal first and a billboard deal second.

That real estate background can be partcularly useful when you’re trying to get something entitled. I can sit down with a developer who’s building a large project in a small town along a major highway and figure out how we can piggyback off the on-premise signage they are applying for. When the developer goes in front of the city council, perhaps we can tack on an off-premise component as part of the larger signage package.

You’re essentially finding a way to shoehorn yourself into the conversation by working alongside a developer who’s about to bring jobs, tax revenue, and a lot of money into that trade area. Their project creates the opportunity, and if you structure it correctly, the OOH component becomes a relatively small piece of a much bigger development conversation.

Where did the names come from?

Location. My father had an office in Uptown Dallas on Fairmount Avenue, and he named his first company after that. Then a couple years later he moved offices to the next street over, Maple Ave. Pretty simple, right?

As for Reata, it’s the Spanish word for lasso or rope. My father was a big fan of the film It’s a Wonderful Life. You know the line where George says he wants to lasso the moon and bring it to his wife. My father loved that line, so he named our family ranch Reata Ranch, and I kept the tradition going. A little bit of nostalgia.

You’re an attorney — what makes a good billboard lease?

All the stuff you already know… long terms, extension options if you can get them, assignment rights, access rights, all of that. But I think the biggest thing is remembering that you’re dealing with a piece of real estate, and real estate changes hands, so a good billboard lease anticipates change. Anybody can write a lease that works on the day you sign it. The question is whether it still works 15 years later when the original landowner is dead, his kids own the property, the shopping center has changed, there’s a mixed-use tower going up, the highway department is widening the road, and your sign is now worth five times what it was when you built it.

That’s where I think having a legal and developer background helps. I’m thinking about successors and assigns, recording a memorandum, access and visibility easements, relocation rights, condemnation, redevelopment, assignment rights and who owns the structure. You’re trying to protect not only the billboard that’s standing there today, but the location and the entitlement you’ve spent years creating.

One story I want to share about creative ways to get locations, this comes from Carl Golab… they really wanted a location on the Tollroad in Dallas, but the only way to get it was to purchase the land, so they did that, carved out an easement, got the permit, then sold the underlying land. Really helps when your OOH group is made up of real estate brokers, since you make a little money on the commission too.

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