Report recommends Perth council reject application for digital billboard on building owned by Lord Mayor

PERTH Council looks set to reject an application for a new digital billboard from a business owned by Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi.

Councillors at last week’s planning committee meeting endorsed an officer’s recommendation that the proposal be refused.

The proposed variable content sign or digital billboard would have faced west from the side of the Akara Hotel, formerly the Grand Central Hotel, on Wellington Street.

Staff said the sign did not comply with City Planning Scheme No. 2 because it did not face a viewing area that was “designed and intended for pedestrians to linger for an extended period of time” and was not “oriented for viewing within the public space and not from adjacent streets”.

Their report said the sign was “inappropriately located as it is intended to be viewed by passing motorists and pedestrians entering an intersection, where it could create a safety hazard”, and it “would result in increased visual clutter on the building and within the streetscape as a result of frequently changing imagery associated with the sign”.

There is a large sign already on the western side of the hotel, but it is a static billboard.

Staff said the modernisation of the sign would be “detrimental to the visual amenity and heritage character of the locality” and would “adversely impact on the amenity of the adjacent environment”.

Council will vote on the matter tonight.