A Miami art museum’s jumbo digital billboard is now live. Take a look at the first ads

A controversial digital billboard went live this week at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, offering the first look at the new advertising space on the city waterfront.

The debut of advertising for the Lowe’s hardware-store chain, Gran Centenario tequila and Saint Laurent apparel gave critics new material for their ongoing fight over the 100-foot-tall structure built on land that PAMM rents from the city.

“It’s worse than I expected. When you see it lit up, it’s really in your face,” said James Torres, president of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance in Miami. “It intrudes on the skyline.”

Along with commercial content, PAMM’s billboard on Friday included the kind of artsy promos that the museum said would come with the jumbo sign. That included images of art itself, as well as a promotion for arts-magnet schools in Miami-Dade and a poster of a Brazilian artist with work on display in the PAMM.

“This project creates a new highly visible way for us to connect with the Miami community at large, to share what is happening inside of PAMM, and to invite them to visit, while at the same time generating critical funding for our ongoing operations, exhibitions, and programs,” the museum said in a statement this week.

The PAMM sign measures 1,800 square feet, more than twice the size allowed elsewhere in Miami and across Miami-Dade under long-standing caps on free-standing digital billboards. In early 2023, the Miami City Commission made exceptions to those caps for PAMM and a few other locations in Miami.

That legislation was sponsored by then-Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who was removed from office after an arrest on unrelated corruption charges.

Orange Barrel Media, an Ohio advertising firm that signed the deal to build PAMM’s sign and share in its advertising revenue, donated $225,000 to a political committee that is run by a company lobbyist and backed Diaz de la Portilla’s failed reelection bid last year.

With two newly elected members this year, the Miami City Commission in May repealed the 2023 law allowing jumbo digital billboards at PAMM, as well as at the nearby Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and the city’s Bayfront Park. PAMM is the only location to construct a billboard using the full size allowed under the 2023 law.

The repeal didn’t invalidate the sign permits issued under the 2023 law, so PAMM was free to turn on the sign this week.

But compliance with the law doesn’t mean PAMM’s billboard fight is over.

Though the City Commission named PAMM in the original legislation authorizing the sign and the city issued a building permit for it, City Manager Art Noriega claimed in a May 30 letter that construction of the sign violated the museum’s ground lease because it didn’t get the administration’s permission to build it.

That could lead to a court fight over the billboard’s fate if the two sides don’t reach an agreement.

Torres and Michael Llorente, a lawyer and lobbyist for a rival billboard company, Outfront Media, both claim the billboard violates state and federal rules governing advertising near federally funded highways, such as the nearby Interstate 395. Enforcing that rule would require action by Florida’s Department of Transportation.

In a statement, Orange Barrel Media noted the sign is larger than nearby lighted commercial signs, which Miami allows to be larger, provided they aren’t digital. One exception is the 3,400-square-foot digital sign on the county-owned Kaseya Center. The sign is attached to the building and thus not considered a billboard.

“This project is sensitive to the context of PAMM and the surrounding neighborhood, and is less than 20 percent of the size of approximately fifty 10,000 square foot advertising signs that are already installed in the immediately surrounding downtown area,” Orange Barrel said. City rules requiring the PAMM sign to go dark after 11 p.m. and brightness restrictions “will ensure the sign does not create any negative impact.”