After 11 months of silence, an advertising company seeking approval of a digital billboard at Red Bank’s northern gateway proposed some horse-trading Thursday night.
At the first zoning board meeting of the new year, planning and engineering experts for Outfront Media LLC detailed changes to the original application for 187 Riverside Avenue, a long-disused gas station facing the Route 35 Cooper’s Bridge.
Among them: instead of rising to 40 feet, as previously proposed, the new LED billboard would top out at 27 feet, said engineer Daniel Dougherty.
It would also shrink in display area, and utilize technology to restrict its visibility to motorists heading south into town across the Navesink River, Dougherty said.
Outfront attorney Jennifer Krimko also proposed a swap: in exchange for an approval, the company would:
• “permanently eliminate” six static billboards it has elsewhere in town, including four “faces” at a site on Shrewsbury Avenue between West Front and Monmouth streets, and two on Oakland Street at the train station.
• allow the borough to display messages for eight minutes per hour at no charge
• turn the LED billboard off between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Outfront needs variances because billboards are not permitted anywhere in town. Nearly two dozen exist, however, under laws that ‘grandfather’ uses that predate the ban. Outfront operates 14 of them, said Dougherty.
With the swap, “we’re proposing to eliminate six non-conforming uses,” Krimko said.
No board members commented on the trade offer.
The proposed billboard would be visible to traffic heading into town across the Navesink River. Messaging would change every eight seconds, in conformity with New Jersey Department of Transportation regulations, Krimko said.
Red Bank Spectator on Facebook has full video of the hearing.
The hearing marked the resumption of a case that began last February and then went dormant, until Outfront modified its plan in December.
At Krimko’s request, the hearing was again adjourned, this time to April 4, when the matter may finally reach the point at which the public is allowed to comment on the record.
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