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The advertising industry is furious about an Auckland City Council plan to ban billboards in the central business district, saying it will destroy billboards as a national advertising medium.
Draft bylaw proposals being considered tomorrow would close 200 of New Zealand's most lucrative billboard sites in the area bounded by Symonds St, Karangahape Rd, Ponsonby Rd and the waterfront.
The Outdoor Advertising Association said the proposal would cost half the sector's revenue, 150 jobs and severely harm the billboard industry.
"Why would advertisers mount a national campaign when they could not access downtown Auckland city?" asked association chairman Duncan Harris.
The chief executive of advertising agency organisation Caanz dismissed the notion that the ban would make Auckland an international city.
"It would be an international city, but it would be in the eastern bloc before the fall of the Berlin Wall," he said.
Tim Simpkins, general manager of APN Outdoor New Zealand - owned by Herald publisher APN News & Media - was involved with early discussion, which he said paid no heed to business issues.
The Auckland City Council's draft proposals would ban billboards in the Queen St valley where pedestrian traffic is heaviest. Billboards on buildings would be severely restricted in the rest of the CBD and billboards would also be restricted around historical city fringe centres such as Ponsonby, Parnell, Mt Eden and Kingsland.
Restrictions would continue in residential areas but free-standing billboards would be allowed in industrial areas.
The chairwoman of the city council's planning and regulatory committee, Glenda Fryer, said the change would remove "visual pollution" and was part of Auckland's bid to become "a truly international city".
She dismissed accusations that business concerns had played no part in the proposals and played down the effects of the billboard ban on the advertising industry.
"Money would just move from billboards to the other media," she said.
Another bylaw would affect signage, with the report saying "many businesses within the city will be required to alter signs".
"Signage is simply a tool for advertising and in urban design terms is less important than the built environment in which it is located," the report says.
