Outdoor Advertising

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich allegedly threatened to prosecute city building officials last week if they issued permits for six wall signs at the L.A. Live entertainment complex downtown, and a city councilwoman said he threatened her with jail time if she intervened. The actions generated more heat in L.A.'s contentious fight over billboards and intensified a feud between Trutanich and one of downtown's most politically connected corporations, Anschutz Entertainment Group.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday for an emergency measure that would prohibit new digital billboards, multistory supergraphics and certain signs that face freeways from being installed throughout the city. The ordinance was unanimously approved by the council out of fears that a federal judge could issue an injunction later this month blocking the city from enforcing an existing temporary ban on outdoor signs. The council has been passing temporary bans to give it time to rewrite its sign laws in a way that can withstand a legal challenge.

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday issued a stinging rebuke of City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, voting unanimously to reject his legal advice and back six controversial sign permits at the L.A. Live entertainment district downtown. Trutanich two weeks ago warned building officials, Councilwoman Jan Perry and representatives of L.A. Live's owner, Anschutz Entertainment Group, that they could face prosecution if sign permits for the company's new movie theater were issued, according to Perry and AEG. Trutanich said the large wall signs violated the city's new ban on outdoor ads. During a two-hour council hearing, five members scolded the city attorney for making the threats, although he did not attend the meeting.

On a sunny morning when many Angelenos flocked to parks and beaches, Judy Riha hit a busy, noisy commercial stretch of La Cienega Boulevard on a hunt for illegal billboards. She stopped every few feet Saturday -- nine times within a two-block stretch -- to count and take note of ads large and small selling cigarettes, energy drinks, movies and retirement plans.

A federal judge refused Monday to halt enforcement of the Los Angeles City Council's newest outdoor advertising law, which bars the installation of new digital billboards and multistory supergraphic signs across the city. In a tentative ruling, U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins said Liberty Media Corp. had failed to show a likelihood that it would prevail with its procedural arguments against the month-old ordinance. Liberty had asked Collins to issue an injunction blocking enforcement of the new law and forcing the city to allow 16 new signs.

It was big. It was bright. It was controversial. And now it's gone. On Thursday, CBS Outdoor Inc. took down a billboard graphic -- black text on a screaming yellow background -- reading: "Consumer Watchdog says: 'You Can't Trust Mercury Insurance.' " The towering Mid-Wilshire billboard was in a prime spot for attracting attention, at least from Mercury Insurance's parent company, Mercury General Corp. It sat about half a mile east of corporate headquarters. Consumer Watchdog's billboard was taken down because Mercury, California's third-largest auto insurer and ninth-largest homeowners insurer, complained to CBS Outdoor, said Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog.

A company that installs the oversized advertisements known as supergraphics has gone to court to demand that Los Angeles let it keep images on as many as 118 multistory buildings while federal judges review challenges to city billboard regulations.

Los Angeles officials thought they were being generous last year when they agreed to allow Hollywood-based CIM Group to place three supergraphics, or oversized vinyl advertisements, on an office building on Highland Avenue. Three months later, that same building has six supergraphics, twice as many as were approved by the City Council. CIM Group also has not removed two billboards from the building's roof, as required under the agreement.

Barbara Broide got the alert from two neighbors Saturday afternoon: Just one day after Los Angeles' new ban on outdoor signs went into effect, a two-story advertisement was being draped across an office building on Santa Monica Boulevard. Broide drove to the site and found a crane lifting the tarp-like sign. Then she quizzed one of the workers, demanding to know whether it had been approved by the city's Department of Building and Safety.

These are tough times for real estate agents, who say some cities make it tougher than it has to be. Real estate agent Ronald Shore is mounting a campaign -- both with signatures and on the Internet -- against a West Hollywood ordinance that he says limits the ability of prospective buyers to find homes for sale while driving on city streets.