 9000 Building at 9000 Sunset Boulevard. Photo courtesy 9000 Building. WeHo News. |
The city’s planning commissions voted to allow the new ad sheathing to cover 52 percent of the building’s eastern face, several times that of the previously allowed 15 percent maximum for tall walls.
Additionally, the commission voted to permit the inevitable “substantial impairment of the aesthetic appeal of the building's architecture” due to the signage.
The new signage will be lit at night; the building already shows a lit 12-story billboard sign featuring HBO on its west face.
Staff described the benefits to the city as “considerable” when laying out the financial windfall the city should reap, especially given past decisions to allow tall walls without collecting a slice of the revenue stream they spawned.
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The agreement provides an estimated $300,000 in the first 48 months of contract, with $10,000 per month in leases thereafter in perpetuity.
 Proposed tall wall for the 9000 Building at 9000 Sunset Boulevard. Photo courtesy 9000 Building. WeHo News. |
The city’s Sunset Specific Plan originally named tall walls "creative billboards," that enhanced the “visual quality of the street and reduce the number of blank walls.”
The original law led to many walls being swathed in advertising setting off a cross-country and even global race to catch up with the billboard-savvy Sunset Strip so that now “tall walls are no longer unique to Sunset Boulevard, and are widespread in greater Los Angeles.
“The widespread nature of this type of advertising has minimized this distinction once unique to West Hollywood,” said the staff report.
Joan Henehan, representing the WeHo Chamber of Commerce as chair, called the tall wall a “cutting edge style of advertising for the Sunset Strip.”
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She gave kudos to the building owners, Mani Brothers, as keeping “impeccable properties,” while applauding the proposal.
On the other hand, a WeHo resident Harriet Siegel (former-planning commissioner and member of the Sunset Specific Plan Tall Wall Advisory Group that put together the city’s ordinance) threw cold water on the proposal, pointing out that the city allowed tall walls in order to spruce up otherwise banal or uninteresting plain-fronted buildings.
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 9000 Building at 9000 Sunset Boulevard. Photo courtesy 9000 Building. WeHo News. |
“The 9000 Building is unique – I think that’s the fifth time [in this hearing that phrase] has been used,” she said. “The façade is faced with glass and steel and very inviting; the staff report agrees with this. It’s called… a Sunset Strip landmark.
“Why would you put a shroud on a unique building,” she asked?
The 9000 Building is Community advocate Jeanne Dobrin spoke out against the tall wall in public comments, saying that the city failed to do an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), “as required by CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act),” leaving the city open to legal challenge over allowing the change.
The attorney for Mani Bros. suggested that CEQA failed to encompass this proposal because they propose no modification to the structure, a point on which asst. city attorney Christi Hogin agreed.
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“This project falls into the category of projects that is exempt from CEQA… this is an existing building, and we’re just talking about adding some color,” she said.
Ms. Dobrin asserted that the financial benefits to the city pale in comparison to the financial benefits that should accrue to the building’s owners.
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 Proposed tall wall for the 9000 Building at 9000 Sunset Boulevard. Photo courtesy 9000 Building. WeHo News. |
“I believe that these signs generate between $45-50,000 per month,” she said, a figure that falls well below the potential six-figure income actually realized by the tall walls.
Ms. Dobrin claimed that the reason for the development agreement was the city’s attempt to recover some revenue from tall walls, which she said should have been voted into effect by citywide initiative rather than be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Commissioner Barbara Hamaker said she did not feel it appropriate to try to gain revenue from the tall walls, “I feel the Sunset Specific Plan and the city needs protecting… [and the payments] seem like a bribe to me.”
She projected that the amount of payments coming into the city’s coffers, $300,000, “is not money; if you look at any of the consent calendars, [$300,000 is] not money,” she said.
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Ms. Hogin explained that, because the tall walls were first expression-protected businesses, “the city cannot simply tax them, but we can say when and where they will go up. We can’t get revenue from them, even though they are quite lucrative.”
 Proposed tall wall for the 9000 Building at 9000 Sunset Boulevard. Photo courtesy 9000 Building. WeHo News. |
She said that the situation, in that it presented a wide diversion from the norm in size and impact, opened the way for the city to dip into the vast stream of cash flowing across the city’s walls.
“In exchange for [increased coverage] we’re getting this revenue,” she said.
Commissioners threw concerns and kudos both at the proposal, expressing anxiety over the potential for precedent while acknowledging the remuneration promised the city.
At Commissioner Donald Deluccio’s request, the lighting would be included in the approval process facing each new iteration of sign erected on the 9000 Building.
In the end the commission approved the adoption of the new sign’s permit and the development agreement’s move up to the City Council, where it will be considered for final approval.
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