After months of controversy and hours of public debate, the City Commission voted Thursday to roll back a controversial ordinance that had granted two downtown arts organizations the right to erect large digital billboards on their properties.
The decision won’t eliminate the towering sign that now stands next to the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) – the commission couldn’t revoke the permission it previously granted without risking a lawsuit – but it will place new restrictions on the digital display.
Specifically, Thursday’s vote will cap the sign’s hours of operation and limit its brightness. The vote will also prevent similar digital signs from sprouting in the future.
District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo, who led the fight against the digital signs, didn’t win the clean repeal he had sought. Instead, he voted in support of a measure that his colleagues described as a compromise – one that included the new restrictions.
The five commissioners were largely united in their opposition to the digital signs, but couldn’t agree on how to unwind the 2023 ordinance that allowed for them. The final vote was 4-to-1 in favor of the roll-back.
Commissioner Manolo Reyes voted no, saying he couldn’t support a compromise that didn’t require PAMM to dismantle its sign. “I want everyone to know that we are in agreement that those signs have to be taken down,” Reyes said. “My vote is a protest.”
Pardo pushed for the rollback knowing that the permitted signs at the PAMM and at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts might be blocked by other means.
Both organizations failed to obtain permission from their landlords for the signs before applying for a construction permit, Pardo said.
The Arsht Center’s landlord – Miami-Dade County – has moved to cancel the center’s permit. The City of Miami – PAMM’s landlord – could do the same, Pardo said.
The City Commission voted to roll back the 2023 ordinance after listening to hours of public comment on Thursday morning.
More than 50 people spoke against the jumbo billboards, including local philanthropist Phillip Frost and other representatives of the Frost Science Museum, the PAMM’s next door neighbor.
Frost representatives said light from the PAMM’s billboard would negatively affect the museum’s wildlife and its rooftop programming and events.
PAMM supporters turned out as well, many in neon yellow t-shirts that said “thank you for supporting the arts,” but they were in the minority. Among those who spoke before the commission, opponents outnumbered supporters by a margin of 4 to 1.
PAMM director Franklin Sirmans described the digital billboard and the revenue it will generate as “instrumental” to the future of the museum. “The sign will be an extension of all that we do,” he said.
Billboard opponents pushed back against PAMM’s messaging as a “false choice,” saying someone could support PAMM and the arts while still opposing its large digital billboard. “We want to support the arts, but we don’t want to destroy our neighborhood,” Kristen Browde with the Downtown Neighbors Alliance (DNA) said.
Downtown residents preferred to frame the issue as a contest between the city’s quality of life and the corrosive influence of money on its politics.
Billboard opponents also cast the decision as a litmus test for a City Commission that has been reshaped in recent months by the addition of two new commissioners who came into office vowing to clean up City Hall. “You are like a breath of fresh air, man,” one opponent told Pardo, while another opponent told Commissioner Miguel Gabela he represented “new hope.”
