Company: Ace Outdoor Advertising.
Market: Sunset Strip, Hollywood, California.
Headquarters: 8901 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Ace Outdoor is an independent, locally-owned advertising company which operates four signs with 7 faces along the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Ace is managed by Andy Bilanzich who was a punter for the 1995 Nebraska cornhuskers national championship football team during college. The company has been redesigning its signs at the request of the city to make them architectually interesting. This week Insider asked Bilanzich for an update.
Andy, is the sign redevelopment finished?
Sort of, the one sign at 8462 West Sunset Blvd at the Grafton Hotel is completed. There are still a couple more redevelopment projects in the works that have not been made public yet, but the ones in the works are really interesting and I think will be our best yet. Hopefully they will be done in the next 180 days or so.
How have the redesigned signs been received in the market?
It is interesting, the advertising community has been receptive to the new designs, BUT, the critical piece of the puzzle is still the location and visibility of of the actual sign faces. We have received several comments on the actual designs of the structures, most very positive, but some negative. The negative comments have mostly come from people who do not want any signs of any kind anywhere. From a business standpoint, I think these types of structures make for a good all around positive experience. It allows for some amount of growth, but at the same time helps soften the impact to surrounding neighbors. We am looking forward to working with the City of West Hollywood to create even more creative and well designed structures. The City of West Hollywood truly is a pioneer in this arena, and have been extraordinary in working with Ace to change the way traditional billboards are designed.
What else is new with Ace?
We are excited about 2016 and everything Ace has going on. Ace recently submitted a proposal for an RFP with the City of West Hollywood to convert some static units on Sunset to digital units. We have partnered with a world renowned architect to design some really interesting features to compliment the development as a whole. Also, the City of West Hollywood recently amended its ordinance to allow for creative Tall Walls along Sunset Blvd which we are extremely excited about. We have brought ideas to the City and unfortunately they did not have a mechanism to allow Ace to do Creative Tall walls, but they have since changed their ordinance to allow for it. Now we are working with our advertisers to come up with some really neat and creative ideas for the Tall Wall Ace owns at 8730 W. Sunset.
