Convention Center billboard developer says he doesn’t have to pay $15 million in community benefits

As contractors prepare to build two towering digital billboards near the Convention Center, neighbors are reviewing the 10-year-old law that legalized such glowing signs in the city — and what happens to $15 million the law promised in “community benefit” payments.

Those grants were to be split among four nonprofits and a condo owners’ group over a 25-year period, according to the law.

But the billboards’ developer, Thaddeus Bartkowski, contends the digital billboards he is building are different from what the law envisioned and will be on state property, so he doesn’t owe the groups anything.

He has offered a smaller “contribution” to three of the groups, which are considering whether to accept the fractional payments or fight for more.

The 2015 City Council ordinance focused on “large scale, full motion video, content-rich installations that occupied the right-of-way,” but the current plan is for what Bartkowski calls “monument displays” on Convention Center property leased to billboard operators, Bartkowski said in an email.

The billboards are taller than the limits imposed by the 2015 law, plans show. But they have smaller digital-sign areas, Bartkowski said.

Bill Green, a former City Council member, who is on the owners’ board at the 201 Broad condo association, said that last month, Bartkowski made his group a cash offer, amounting to less than two years’ payments of the 25 years originally promised.

Green agrees that the digital billboards Bartkowski plans to erect are different from the original proposal — but not in good ways: The one across the street from his building “is bigger; it’s uglier; it’s not what we agreed to,” he said. “We’d rather not have the money and not have the billboard.”

This summer Bartkowski and his Catalyst outdoor-advertising group plan to put up digital billboards at two sites near the Convention Center, according to John McNichol, the center’s president. The center hopes to reap “north of $250,000″ a year from the signs along with advertising, he said. He expects Bartkowski will sell the signs to a national billboard company.

One Convention Center sign is planned for the corner of the main building in the southeast corner of Broad and Race Streets, within the digital billboard district set up by the 2015 law.

The other will tower above a truck yard at Seventh and Callowhill Streets, visible along Vine Street from the Ben Franklin Bridge to the 30th Street train station, outside the area specified in the 2015 law.

The city’s digital billboard ordinance covering the neighborhood around the Convention Center promised community benefit payments in rising annual increments over 25 years to these groups in exchange for their “support and cooperation” in agreeing to the signs:

Bartkowski has said his firm can build outside the digital zone and without the list of city approvals required in the 2015 law not only because plans have changed, but also because the Convention Center is a state agency. Its projects are approved by state, not city, agencies, so his firm also shouldn’t have to pay the local groups millions either.

Bartkowski told city officials “it’s not the same billboard that was envisioned back in 2015,” said Anne Kelly, chief of staff for Councilmember Mark Squilla, whose district includes the center.

Squilla has agreed to bring Bartkowski and the community groups together for discussions but has not taken a public position on the legal issues, Kelly said.

The city ordinance limits digital billboard structures to 58 feet tall, if attached to an existing structure, or 45 feet, if standing alone.

According to plans provided by the Convention Center, the Broad Street billboard is to be 67 feet high, nine feet taller than the limit for digital billboards attached to a building.

The freestanding Seventh and Callowhill billboard is to be even higher — 87 feet, or nearly double the city limit.

At the same time, according to Bartkowski, the signs will have digital displays less than half as large as allowed in the city law and smaller than expected when the law passed.

“We were briefed by Squilla’s office in early April that the interpretation was going to be different,” said Rebecca Cordes Chan, executive director of the Friends of Rail Park, which extends from Callowhill to Noble Streets.

In a meeting with Squilla and Bartkowski, “we were presented with a draft agreement,“ Cordes Chan said. Bartkowski offered to pay less than half the amount originally pledged. She said her group is reviewing the new proposal.

Green, who is an attorney, said the changes in the dimensions of digital billboards doesn’t change the law, the community benefit agreements, or the need for zoning review.

“We are exploring every legal avenue” to bring the proposal under closer city scrutiny, Green said.

He contends the billboards will still need city approvals, citing Pennsylvania state court decisions confirming commercial projects on public land are subject to city zoning “even if it’s at a state agency like the Convention Center.”

Bartkowski has said he doesn’t have to pay the two largest would-be beneficiaries of the original law — Reading Terminal and Avenue of the Arts — because the new billboards will not be visible from the two sites where he plans to build.

“We wish we were” getting paid, said Madeline Apollo, chair of the Avenue of the Arts board.

When the law was passed, the Convention Center also envisioned a billboard on South Broad at the Bellevue hotel parking garage — visible along South Broad, the Avenue of the Arts focus area — “but it was never put up, and they just renovated the Bellevue, so I doubt they will put a billboard up now,” Apollo said.

Lawyer Carl Primavera, who negotiated the original agreements between Bartkowski-affiliated entities and the community groups, laughed when told Bartkowski has offered to pay a fraction of the original agreement totals.

“What a character!” Primavera said.

He noted his firm had sued Bartkowski to collect its own fees. Bartkowski also has been sued by lenders and former employees who contended he owed them millions.

Primavera said community benefit agreements developed as an alternative to the detailed conditions once attached to Philadelphia city zoning approvals, when zoning officials balked at enforcing arcane requirements.

He said former State Sen. Vince Fumo, a Democrat who represented Philadelphia, had urged community benefit agreements for pro sports team owners when their venues were constructed in South Philadelphia.

“The Packer Park neighborhood was going to get hit with traffic and annoyance, so there were funding agreements implemented,” Primavera recalled. “The teams were assessed; the funds came in; the undertakings were honored.”

But Primavera added that such agreements can be tough to enforce, absent strong and ongoing support from elected officials.

“If you don’t pay, what can they do? Knock on your door? That’s a risk of incorporating a private agreement into a public ordinance: What’s the enforceability? I don’t think there’s an across-the-board answer.”