A follow up from our February 25th article.  The Mercury News had reported that the San Jose City Council was removing from the city’s list of top priorities plans to add new digitals signs allowing private property owners to erect free-standing billboard structures on freeway-facing sites, allowing smaller digital billboards on city-owned land in the public right of way and building-mounted signage opportunities in downtown and North San Jose.  Insider has speculated that though the City said they would be stopping the proposed program, there would be more to this story.

At their council meeting at the end of the week,  the Council did vote to shelf the proposal to allow for up to 75 new free-standing digital billboards on private properties along the freeways, as well as an unspecified number of signs on private buildings in the downtown core. However, they did opt to continue moving forward with plans to erect smaller digital signs in the public right-of-way, in the downtown core. The council members also made it clear that they have no plans to block the construction of 22 new digital signs and free-standing billboards on city-owned sites, which the council separately approved more than two year ago.

Insider’s Take: Ultimately the Council chose to focus on city owned property and the income that will be generated for their budget needs.  Insider thinks they missed an opportunity on the other digitals and the swap program that would have reduced the total numbers of faces in San Jose while upgrading a significant number of freeway facing structures from static to digital.

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