I’m always on the look out for new locations. In southern Minnesota, where I operate, outdoor advertising is highly restricted. I mean very highly restricted. About the only way you can do a new build is through rezoning or city expansion.

Permitting can be a very long, drawn out process. Planning commissions and city councils, everybody with their own agenda. And many times, not a very good grasp of what they can and can not do as an election officials. It helps to know the ordinance in a given area better than anyone, even the city planner. I joke about that I take the city code as it pertains to outdoor advertising and I read it forward. Then I read it backwards. Then I tear it up into little bits and eat it. In the case of our most resent build in New Prague, MN it wasn’t too bad.  They are a very reasonable lot. Think are a bit more black and white. If it fits the ordinance you get the permit. If it doesn’t, you don’t. This permit wasn’t bad at all. And this is the last one that will be issued in the city because of restrictions. I double and triple checked that.

It helps when you have an 18 year old son who is an excellent fabricator. He’s an outstanding welder and hard worker. But probably the best part is that biggest help is that he is a really good problem solver. He did most of the heavy fabrication.

I also have my brother Bob who has about every piece of equipment you might want. And his son David is really sharp. You add up all the Fredricksons that had a piece in this and you’ve got the board built and in place.

Not bad at all. It was a pleasure to work with the landowner. He had a skid steer and so he needed the extra dirt that we ended up with from the excavation and put it to good use on his property.  It took 4 hrs to dig the hole 36” X 11’ deep, set and align pole and another  5 hrs to mount and weld head and install MDO faces

We do. I really try to focus on local companies. I try to make our new location an asset to the community. It helps in future development and I think it’s just good business.

I try to make all of our location the same size. In this case, I was able to set up a rotation with an existing site I own. We can offer the local advertiser access to both of the two main roads into and out of the City of New Prague. We will be rotating the sign faces every three months, alternating between the two sites of the same size. We can also charge a 25% premium for the rotational locations. The advertisers love it because it gives them full coverage at considerably less cost than having two static locations.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the economics of this sign.

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