SIDE STREETS: Billboards are behaving badly, neighbors say

Times Square. Las Vegas. Security, Colo.

What do they have in common? High-tech, digital, brilliant LED billboards turning nighttime into day.

LEDs, known for turning neighborhood Christmas decorations into dazzling displays, are showing up more on billboards.

But that use of the ultra-bright, long-life, electronic lights isn’t exactly neighborhood friendly.

“It’s an eyesore,” said Rose Stewart, whose home in Security, along South Academy Boulevard, is near one of five new LED billboards in El Paso County.

“The light shines right on my living room window,” Rose said. “It blinks and I see it all the time. Blink. Blink. Blink. Sometimes, it makes me mad.”

A neighbor said she thought her cataract surgery had gone poorly when she got up in the middle of the night and saw the bright, flashing light of the sign near Bradley Road.

A two-sided LED billboard on Austin Bluffs Parkway, near Barnes Road, blinks every six seconds or so, flashing ads for a savings and loan, hot pizza, a Christian Web site and new windows.

“If we have our blinds open when it changes, it will make our balcony lighter,” said Loyce Hoffman, who lives across the parkway in the Sterling Pointe Apartments. “But we close our blinds at night. It doesn’t bother me any.”

Most neighbors I talked to were similarly divided over the LED billboards. Some oppose them while others grudgingly accept them.

The LED billboards are owned by Lamar Outdoor Advertising, which has a network of hundreds of the digital boards nationwide.

Companies are turning to the LED displays — despite huge pricetags of $250,000 or so — because of their enhanced visibility and the memorable impact they make on motorists. They are hard to ignore.

But that’s the problem, said Larry Barrett of Scenic Colorado. Barrett is campaigning to get the LEDs banned in El Paso County, as they are in Colorado Springs and Denver.

Barrett and several allies, including Dave Munger, president of the Council of Neighbors and Organizations, urged the El Paso County Commission on Tuesday to consider rules to prevent future LED billboards from being built.

At the meeting, Lamar general manager Hal Ward agreed to discuss limiting future LED billboards.

“Lamar isn’t going to build any more LED signs until we get this straightened out,” Ward said.

He noted Lamar agreed to dim the Security billboard at dusk and turn it completely off at 11 p.m. in response to complaints.

“It was a huge concession for us,” Ward said.

Stewart said she’s glad the light is off at night .

“They were cooperative,” she said. But she worries the outage is only temporary to appease neighbors.

I’m guessing most neighborhoods hope what happens in Security stays in Security.

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