Company: Divine Outdoor Advertising
Markets: Florida
Headquarters: 11415 Harder Rd, Clermont, FL 34711
Phone: 352-394-4850
Email: ddivine@cfl.rr.com
Divine Outdoor Advertising is a privately held billboard company serving South Clermont and Four Corners, Florida. The company was started in 2001. The company’s billboards are located west of the Walt Disney world theme parks. The company is owned by Daniel Divine. Insider talked with Divine earlier this week.
Dan, how did you enter the outdoor business?
I began in this wonderful business in 1986 as an AE for a small Outdoor company that was here in central Florida called Rite Media. The following year I had the opportunity to join Peterson Outdoor Advertising in Orlando and served at that plant as an account executive, real estate representative and permanent bulletin manager under various owners until 2000 when I semi-retired.
Tell us about your plant?
I have the most unique small plant in central Florida. When I bought my billboard structures and permits in 2001, I also bought the real estate under them. The billboards, permits and real estate had all been together since before the 1995 enactment of the Bert J. Harris Private Property Rights Act. Little did I know when I bought my plant how valuable that timing and those combined grandfathered property rights would be! In 2007 I had my wood structures removed and rebuilt to steel. In looking to the future, I had the new steel structures engineered for 150 mph wind loads and all facings to be capable of featuring digital displays. Currently two of my facings have tri-visions, but due to exploding growth in my area, the time has arrived for converting three or more of my faces to digital. Due to me nearing full retirement and also believing the highest and best use for digital displays in this market and most others is to be in a network- this is where I go into my shameless plug- I’ll probably look to sell my plant in the near future to one of the “big three”.
What’s the Florida outdoor market like?
It’s a very favorable environment for existing operators but brutal for new operators. In market areas like mine, which is on the outskirts of the Orlando MSA, the rapid population growth and subsequent land development has caused a ton of billboards that never can be rebuilt to be removed. That combined with much tougher sign ordinances has made it much more difficult to find new legal billboard locations and to also convert existing ones to digital without trading in numerous faces to get permits to do so. As an example of how brutal the local sign ordinances are now, Orange County, near me, as of this year, no longer allows new billboards to be built on Railroad property! These factors have really benefited all of the existing operators and has also nicely set the present and future stage for better rate integrity, higher occupancy and wider acceptance of digital displays.
Have you ever sustained damage from a storm or hurricane?
Prior to having my short wood structures rebuilt to steel, I rented U Haul Box vans and parked them on either side of my structures when it was evident we would be going under a Hurricane watch That strategy really saved me from a lot of costly damage during the back to back hurricanes of 2005 that pretty much leveled most all wood structures in the hurricanes path.
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