Adams Outdoor Wisconsin Real Estate Manager Devin Renner has a great story about how creative thinking removed a regulatory logjam and created a win-win situation for Adams Outdoor and Middleton, Wisconsin. We’ll let Devin tell the story…
The problem
In 2021 Adams Outdoor went through the approval process for a new digital billboard in Middleton WI, a suburb just outside of Madison. As the project was completing and construction was finished, all that was left was the electrical and we’d have a brand new sign. At the last minute though we were held up by a permitting issue, Adams was given a stop work order and everything ground to a halt. Conversations went nowhere and it lead to lawsuits and appeals headed all the way to the State Supreme Court. In the meantime the fully constructed, but non-operational digital billboard was just sitting there on our major highway getting dusty. In the Spring of 2023 I joined the company as the Real Estate Manager. Our local GM Julie Johnson encouraged me to look for a solution. I discovered that the City Manager of Middleton was Bryan Gadow, someone I knew and had a good relationship with. I reached out and said I understood we were stuck in a fight, but asked if we could grab coffee so I could hear the city’s perspective. He was happy to, so a couple of days later we met up and although he hadn’t been at the city when it had all gone down either, he had enough details to give me a more in depth understanding.
Wifi as a solution
With his information in hand I began to wonderif we could partner with the city on something they needed as an alternative to litigation. I attended some of the Planning Committee meetings and reviewed the city’s Comprehensive Plan. It turned out that the City of Middleton really wants to be a city with good walkability. They want most of their residents to be able to walk or bike anywhere in town within 15 minutes. That got me wondering, if I’m wandering around on Main Street or downtown what’s something I could use? The obvious answer; Wi-fi. What if Adams worked with an ISP and agreed to provide and pay for free wi-fi for residents to have access to downtown? I brought that back to Julie who in turn brought it to our corporate team. They had their doubts, but again encouraged me to bring the idea to the city and see if they were interested or if it could lead to something else. Bryan and I met up again for coffee and I pitched him on the idea. You give us the approval for our digital sign, we’ll set up and pay for free wi-fi for your downtown for the next ten years. Bryan wasn’t sure about downtown, but he liked the idea for one of the city parks called Lake View. He said he’d relay the idea to the Mayor, Emily Kuhn and see what she thought of it and take it from there.
Discussions with the Mayor
About a week later myself and my Government Affairs Rep Tom Hickey happened to be at a Madison Chamber of Commerce event where they were hosting a mayoral panel discussion from Madison surrounding suburb mayors. One of the panelist happened to be Mayor Kuhn who spoke about a desire to increase accessibility to technology and the challenges cities face in creating those opportunities. After the forum Tom and I went to introduce ourselves. We weren’t sure if she’d even talk to us at this point as we were still technically engaged in a lawsuit and there was no actual proposal in place, but she was polite enough to at least make small talk with us. In the course of the small talk we discovered that we had both lived in Columbus OH in the somewhat recent past. Her for grad school and me for high school. We lived there within a few years of each other and she asked if I was familiar with a summer art walk event that occurs on Friday nights in downtown Columbus. I was very aware of the event and she began discussing how she had desire to create a similar event for Middleton and use it to drive traffic to the local businesses. That then lead to talking about how if the event was hosted at Lake View Park she could address the issue of accessibility to technology for her residents and use that available wi-fi to help drive traffic to her event and the local businesses.
Roadblocks removed
A few months later I am happy to say Middleton has free wi-fi in Lake View park installed and paid for, for the next ten years by Adams Outdoor. When that ten years is up we’ve promised to renew for another ten years based on the technology in 2034. Adams meanwhile now has a fully functional and firing on all cylinders digital billboard leased for the next twenty years on one of the highest traffic impression spots in Middleton. Some outside the box thinking and everyone in this situation won.
To celebrate all of this we and the city got with the Middleton Chamber and hosted a ribbon cutting event for the wi-fi at the park. Attached are some links to some news articles.
Billboard Insider’s take: Kudos to Adams for creative thinking. Sometimes you have to give something to get something which is exactly what Adams did. Win, win, win. Adams gets a valuable digital billboard. Local businesses get a way to tell their story to potential customers. Middleton’s citizens get free wifi.
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Absolutely fantastic story. Thank you for sharing.