Agreement close on controversial billboard

The dispute over the new billboard at the intersection of Green Springs Highway and Lakeshore Drive could be nearing an end.  

After a morning of threatened lawsuits and bitter accusations, local officials and New Point Digital appeared close to an agreement this afternoon that would leave all sides happy. The proposed agreement would provide a new location for the billboard away from residential buildings, without costing local taxpayers money, according to Homewood Mayor Scott McBrayer.

McBrayer worked out the tentative agreement along with several county commissioners, the mayor of Vestavia and New Point Digital President David Dubose.

"We were all kind of geared up before that meeting,” McBrayer said. "I’m just telling you we had a very positive, productive meeting this afternoon. If you had sat down and drew out this meeting beforehand, it went exactly how you drew it out, exactly how you would’ve wanted it to go."  

The agreement still hinges on finding an acceptable new site for the billboard. McBrayer would not comment on what other concessions the city or county might make to New Point Digital to compensate for the cost of moving its billboard.  

Earlier in the day DuBuose had said that there was legal precedent for his company to sue the county and city of Homewood for millions of dollars in lost income. He also claimed that local residents had harassed him. 

"One of the organizers behind the Facebook page [set up to protest the billboard], came up to me as I was leaving a coffee shop and said, 'We’re watching you,’” Dubose said.  “And they said, 'We know where you live.'"  

Scott Dean, who lives across the highway from the new billboard and who helped organize protests, is cautiously optimistic about the new agreement. He thought the sign was coming down earlier in the week, but later said he found out that DuBose still might not move the billboard if his conditions weren’t met.  

Dean said DuBose's claims of being threatened were either untrue or overblown for positive publicity.

“Is it possible that in a group of 1,000 people that somebody who everyone is mad at... went a little too far? It’s possible,” Dean said. "But if the worst thing that’s happened is that someone said, ‘We’re watching you,’ that’s pretty good."  

If an agreement wasn’t reached this afternoon, the city was ready to file its own lawsuit against New Point Digital, McBrayer said this morning.

"It’s a little premature at this point,” McBrayer said. “But I can assure you with one phone call we are ready and I will make that one phone call if I have to. I give you my word, we are ready."  

Despite his meeting with officials later in the day, DuBose proceeded to connect the controversial billboard up to its power supply, according to workers at the gas station where the billboard is located. This was the final step of a process that DuBuose began back in August 2014, which he said would’ve brought in between $500,000 and $600,000 in revenue per year for 10 years.  

At the time he began this process, he knew a few residents might get upset.

"We expected that there would be a couple folks that were concerned,” DuBose said. “But we also thought we would be able to show them once the board turned on, that it wouldn’t be disruptive."  

Now it looks as though, at its current location, the billboard may never get turned on.