By Charlie Mitchell
How do you take down billboards with a perpetual lease?
Cars are parked before the billboards on Cranky Pat’s expanded parking lot. Photos courtesy Gary Goyke.
The owner of the popular pizza restaurant in Neenah called Cranky Pat’s bought a small piece of land adjoining his property so he could expand his parking lot to accommodate his growing business. David Earle knew there were two billboards on the land before he bought it, of course, but what he didn’t know was how hard it would be to take those billboards down. It turns out that the land came with an easement for placement of those billboards, and the equivalent of a perpetual lease.
Earle wanted to remove the billboards ever since he bought the land on South Commercial Street in late 2024, for a number of reasons. Not only do they present large unsightly commercial messages, but they are positioned near the middle of the expanded parking lot so that they separate the new parking space from the long-existing parking lot. And Earle is concerned that one or both of them could blow down in a storm and damage one or more cars parked nearby.
Each billboard face is about 12 feet tall and 24 feet wide. The top of each billboard face is about 17 feet high.
The lease holder and owner of the billboard, Lamar Advertising, does not want to relinquish the lease so the billboards can be taken down. Lamar has refused Earle’s approaches to buy out the lease.
The City of Neenah attorney, whom Earle inquired to, could not offer advice about getting the billboards removed since there is no obvious evidence that any laws are being broken. Earle said he learned that the billboards do not conform to current city ordinances so that if they come down by natural causes, such as blown down by a storm, they can not be re-erected. Also, the amount spent to reinforce a billboard cannot exceed the value of the materials it is constructed of.
Two billboards appear to the left of the entrance to Cranky Pat’s pizza restaurant. Photos courtesy Gary Goyke.
The billboards are made of steel including steel posts. The steel materials look new enough to suggest that the billboards may have been rebuilt in recent years
Invited by Earle, Citizens for a Scenic Wisconsin president Gary Goyke went to Neenah early in May to visit Earle and to make observations and gather information. After the visit, Goyke invited Earle to attend the meeting of the CSW board of directors on May 21.
Earle related his story of buying the land with the billboards and his attempts to get them taken down to the board at the meeting. Goyke proposed a four-point plan directed at getting them taken down:
- Do due diligence and further discovery.
- Ask WisDOT what their involvement has been and how strong they consider the lease.
- Keep State Rep. Dean Kaufert, former mayor of Neenah, involved.
- Contact the City of Neenah alderman and encourage him to help.
Goyke said that, in his position as president of CSW, he has heard of several other cases where a billboard obstructing a business or government project is hard to remove.