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Moving Violation?
Mobile billboards skirt city's ban.
By Dave Fitzpatrick
http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=5154
 In
the world of outdoor advertising, Portland is viewed as hostile
territory. Yet some clever billboard owners have found a loophole
in the city's law big enough to, well, drive a truck through.
Two mobile messengers, commonly called ad-trucks, rolled around
the Rose City last week, each carrying 10-by-22-foot billboards
on their backs. One--owned by New York-based Street Blimps--flogged
Toyota's youth-oriented Scion, with scheduled stops near Portland
State University, the University of Portland and Waterfront Park.
The other, operated by Do It Outdoors, a Pennsylvania company,
promoted 7-Eleven's new Vcom financial kiosks in Southeast and downtown.
DIO officials say the signs on each truck cost clients approximately
$5,000 a week, and their 37 trucks are all booked.
"I came from Minneapolis, advertising Dex phonebooks,"
says DIO driver Dan Bankhead, who spent 10 hours a day behind the
wheel in Portland.
Bankhead left Portland in his dust Friday, but others are sure
to follow, as mobile billboards are gaining ground across the country.
Here in town, they're slipping through the legal equivalent of a
yellow light.
The sign code adopted by the City Council in 1996 bans new billboards
in excess of 200 square feet, yet the sign area aboard both trucks
measures 220 square feet.
Maybe these are portable signs, which the city defines as "not
attached to a structure or the ground." Even here there's a
problem: Movable signs can measure only 12 square feet in area (and
temporary portable signs can be only 4 square feet). But those regulations
are meant to govern small signage such as banners and A-boards outside
restaurants.
Then again, city code also bans "signs placed on...a motor
vehicle or trailer parked with the primary purpose of providing
signs not otherwise allowed by the code." This seems to imply
that ad trucks might be legal when moving.
Confused yet? You're not alone. "They fall between the cracks,"
says City Commissioner Randy Leonard, whose office works with the
Bureau of Development Services to regulate signs. "We don't
regulate these."
So, at least for now, ad-trucks have a green light on our city
streets.
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