Buellton Chamber Pulls Digital Billboard Plan

The Buellton Chamber of Commerce says it got an initial green light from a unanimous City Council to pursue construction of a 35-foot tall, 48-foot wide digital billboard on privately-owned land on the north side of the city along Highway 101.

“The current City Council did approve the sign ordinance to allow for this type of sign to go up, its called the Community Identification Sign”, says Buellton Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Kathy Vreeland, “the whole purpose behind it was to allow our business members, being the Chamber, to promote their businesses at a freeway level which is rare to find in this area, this county espcially, so we found an opportunity there and decided to explore it further.”

Vreeland says most people don’t know the Chamber owns the four existing billboards in Buellton including the historic Andersen’s Spit Pea Soup sign along Highway 101.

“Digital was not the first idea that came to mind”, Vreeland says, “however after exploring it and understanding the options and the opportunities that that would allow our business community to have, and the exposure, we decided to explore that a little bit further.”

Just as the Chamber was to begin the city’s extensive planning and review process, it pulled the plug and the paperwork on the $500,000 to $600,000 project.

“Whether or not we revisit it, that’s to be discussed yet, right now we know its a sensitive topic and we definitely want to explore that”, Vreeland says about the decision to pull back on the project, “we will go to the community and the public, we weren’t even at that phase yet, the next phase for us was to go to Planning to see if they would even approve the building process and the plans, and then we would still have to go out into the community to explain what we wanted to do with the sign and also go out to the business community to see if we had any interest, we didn’t know if we had the business interest yet or the funding to do it.”

“It was a shock, its totally inconsistent with our way of life here”, says Buellton resident Thomas Widroe who says he’s using the digital billboard project and a petition drive to stop it as a platform in his candidacy for Buellton City Council, “we don’t want Las Vegas in Buellton, we don’t want it to look that way, we want to be a small, rural western-style town.”

“When we go to bed at night, we want it to be dark, we don’t want to see things up in lights here”, Widroe says, “unfortunately there’s a minority, a group of special interests, they don’t want what we want.”

Widroe says the petition drive and nodigitalbillboard.com website will continue even though the Chamber has pulled the project.

“Plans get pulled and re-submitted all the time in local government”, Widroe says, “it’s what they are really waiting for, this is why they are running three individuals from the Chamber, is to stack the City Council with people who will approve this sign, that’s unacceptable to me.”

Vreeland defends the Chamber’s decision to pursue the digital billboard project, saying its intended to help local chamber members keep up with the changing landscape of advertising and marketing.

“We are moving into a digital age, a digital era, the future, our kids are all on digital media”, Vreeland says, “it allows for a much clearer image, its not flashing lights, its not Vegas style, its purely a transition of images and advertisements if you will.”

“It was never to run anything into the ground or mark up the territory at all”, Vreeland adds, “it was all purely forward thinking for our community and how we can give back and thinking of our business community and how we can help them expose and promote their businesses at whole new level. A lot of thought went into this, its not that we jumped into the digital idea at all, we are very aware and very astute that it might touch some buttons of some people in the Valley and we understand that.”

“It doesn’t really matter who advertises on it”, Widroe says, “I know there are certain interests, probably in the rest of the Valley, that would find themselves wanting to advertise on that billboard, I get that, but that doesn’t benefit Buellton, we’re not interested in that here in Buellton.”

“We’re okay with the Pea Soup Andersen’s sign, that has a classic, historic heritage look and feel, that’s consistent with who we are”, Widroe says, “if sombody wants to put up a classic billboard like that that looks and feels the same way, hey it’s much different than putting up a digital eyesore that everybody in the community has to see 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”