Bill Lodzinski, President and CEO of WV Outdoor received some good news recently. The city of Charleston, West Virginia approved a Bill that creates an opportunity to convert and/or build digital signs in the city on a very reasonable Cap & Replace basis. We reached out to Bill, to learn the details and got a terrific primer on how to work with local government.

Bill, I understand the idea for this project started a while ago?

Patience and diligence are the key with this sort of thing. The city does not move at the same urgency, I’ll tell you that much. But they were really great in working with us throughout the process.

Soon after my arrival, I initiated the conversation with the city on a Cap & Replace initiative to convert existing traditional billboards to digitals. The city had a mortarium on any new billboard construction, it didn’t allow digital billboards, and had stringent non conformity designation on all existing billboards. After almost two years of working on this initiative, we finally got the bill (Bill 7986) passed! Not only do we get to convert existing billboards to digitals, we can now build new digital billboards.

At the beginning, I understand you reached out to the OAAA for assistance?

When I first floated the idea, I was told that the city was “anti-billboard” and I would never get this passed. Kerry Yoakum at OAAA was a big help in guiding me. I called Kerry to get his insight, feedback and guidance on pursuing a Cap & Replace initiative with the city. He provided me with their experiences with other municipalities, as well as information on similar programs that have been adopted across the country. All of which were valuable and helped get us going on this initiative. OAAA has always been a great partner and resource!

Can you walk us through the process of getting the project initiated?

I started with the mayor and met with her in September of 2021. She loved the idea and set up a second meeting with the city’s Planning Director. After several weeks of trying, we were able to secure the second meeting and pitched the idea to him (these guys are always a tough sell). He was open to the idea but wanted to get with his staff. We then had another meeting with him and staff to hash out ratios, implementation, details, etc. The Planning Director then met with the city attorney to draft the language. We met again to review the first draft and had further discussions. We didn’t like the language they had drafted so the city asked us to draft the language we wanted. We obliged and after a few minor adjustments on their part, Bill 7986 was drafted. The city then secured a member of city council to sponsor the bill.

So was that it?

Hardly, we then had to go through three approval rounds. It first had to pass the Municipal Planning Commission. Then the Planning, Streets and Traffic Committee, and finally, the knock- out round with City Council.

I just gave you a brief synopsis that makes it seem like this was an easy, quick and straightforward process. But as you know, it is not and was not in this case. We had to be diligent and persistent in getting in front of the right people, selling the benefits to all parties involved and going through grueling “interrogations” during the approval process. Plus, we had to make sure we were cultivating critical relationships along the way.

But you were successful?

Yes, the bill passed on June 5th. I was delighted to learn that after approval, it quickly goes on the books! The code amendment became effective by end of that week! We can now proceed with permitting and move forward with our conversion projects. This is a great win for WV Outdoor, the City of Charleston, and for the OOH industry.

Can you give us a brief synopsis of how the new Bill works and what are the initial near term plans for WV Outdoor?

In a nutshell, in order to covert an existing billboard to a digital, we need to remove billboards of equal square footage. This allows us to mix and match on the removals. For example, if we want to convert a 14’ x 48’ billboard, we can remove another 14’ x 48’ OR one (1) 10’6 x 36 and one (1) poster unit, OR Three (3) poster units. In order to construct a new digital billboard, we need to remove double the square footage.

In anticipation of this bill passing, we were very proactive in our approach. We pre identified our conversion sites, solidified our leases, as well as securing all our digital screen, construction and installation quotes. We have already initiated the permitting process and we should be pulling the trigger on our projects in the coming days. Our goal is to have our designated conversions completed in the next few months.

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