The West Hollywood Planning Commission recently approved a building renovation at 9091 Santa Monica Blvd.  WeWhoville wrote about the approval and the following passage caught Insider’s eye (italics ours):

The Historic Preservation Commission earlier had voted down a plan for a rooftop deck. Its concern was not about possible noise from the deck but that access to it would require installation of an elevator and that the elevator tower would physically interrupt the historic billboard structure and be visually intrusive because it would be located so close to the roof edge on Doheny… Because the billboard on the roof is one of the historic building’s “character defining features,” the Commission’s approval of the project also legalized it as a historic billboard that conforms to city regulations.”

Insider’s take:  West Hollywood is one of the few communities to recognize that billboards can add energy to a business district.  It even has a policy to promote creative and innovative billboards on the Sunset Strip.  In most cities there’s a knee-jerk reaction to new billboards as blight but when the same billboard has been around long enough it gets called iconic and character-defining.  Think about the Baltimore Art Board or The Nashville Sign or Times Square or these rooftop signs in the Fountain Square neighborhood in Indianapolis.

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