County may yank Miami’s power to OK mega-billboards downtown

Miami-Dade is moving to yank from the City of Miami the power to erect huge billboards that have been contentious among downtown residents. Meanwhile, the city today (3/14) is to act on its sign ordinance created under powers the county seeks to rescind.

The county last week passed 11-0 a preliminary vote to “reassert county jurisdiction over signage within the City of Miami urban core and to remove authorization for the city to opt out of the county sign code.”

The measure by Commissioner Eileen Higgins, one of three commissioners representing areas of the city, comes amidst a city internal battle over a January 2023 measure that updated Miami’s billboard ordinance to allow 10-story-tall signs with two faces of up to 1,080 square feet per side to rise at more sites that include Bayfront Park, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and Maurice A. Ferré Park.

On Feb. 22, the city repealed authorization of supersize billboards but threatened suits might reinstitute billboards at some of those locations.

Those supersize billboards are nearly twice as tall as county rules allow. The city vote today would create a 240-day moratorium on new billboard applications while it crafts a new ordinance. The county measure would take away from the city all ability it now has under past county authorization to exceed county sign rules within its urban core.

County Commissioner Higgins, who was absent from last week’s meeting, asked commissioners to bypass the required six-week wait between a first vote and a committee hearing. She asked that the earliest available commission committee hold that hearing because vast billboards in the core area are rising now.

But Keon Hardemon, whose county district also represents the city, said there is little hurry to act because the city now has a moratorium on new signs “so there’s not much of a rush to build new signage.”