Former Springfield Mayor Karen Hasara remembers the
ample bosom that got people’s panties in a twist.
The cleavage belonged — and still does —
to Terry Harris, a North End native and owner of a local lingerie and
adult-video store.
There was Harris, a former model, clad in leather,
bent over and holding a whip. The racy image was plastered on giant
billboards along Jefferson Street and Wabash Avenue.
At the time, some five years ago, Hasara was working
to pass an ordinance banning billboards from the capital city.
Hasara credits the lingerie billboards with creating
a public outcry and attracting media attention.
“Those billboards got the public riled up and
allowed us to take on the initiatives,” says Hasara, who is now
retired.
Hasara’s beautification program, called Scenic
Springfield, made a series of major revisions to the city’s zoning
code.
Current Mayor Tim Davlin last spring announced his
own beautification initiative, called Springfield Green, which promotes
flower and tree plantings.
Davlin has since watered down parts of Hasara’s
controversial ordinance for fear of impeding new development.
Despite Davlin’s tinkering, the restrictions
placed on billboards under Hasara’s administration have proved
effective.
No new billboards have been built in the city since
Hasara’s ordinance passed more than three years ago, says city zoning
administrator Joe Gooden.
That’s because the city now requires four
billboards to be removed for one to be built. Restrictions on the size and
location of new billboards are also tight.
“The ordinance is as stringent as you can
get,” says Jeff Stauffer, an owner and founder of Mid-America Outdoor
Advertising, which owns 110 billboard faces in the capital city.
But Hasara’s assault on billboards wasn’t
a complete success. She had initially sought to get rid of most of the
billboards within the city limits but backed off after being threatened
with lawsuits.
Today more than 50 municipalities throughout Illinois
restrict new billboard construction. But none has been able to force the
removal of existing billboards.
A state law passed in the early ’90s dictates
that billboard companies forced to take down their signs be given cash
compensation — a requirement that has proved prohibitively expensive.
That’s why billboards continue to clutter
Springfield’s major thoroughfares, including Clear Lake Avenue,
Dirksen Parkway, MacArthur Boulevard, Sangamon Avenue, Stevenson Drive,
Veterans Parkway, and Wabash Avenue.
In a way, Hasara admits, her efforts to prettify
Springfield backfired.
In 1999, the former mayor called for a six-month
moratorium on permits for new billboards. But in the two-week period before
the moratorium started, billboard companies had a field day. Gooden says
that the city issued 43 billboard permits during that two-week window.
That’s more than half the number of permits issued during the
previous six years combined, he says.
“The moratorium was a bad decision,”
Hasara says. “We were overwhelmed by what happened.”
As for Harris, the former lingerie model and
provocateur still has her Bad Girl Video store on Dirksen Parkway —
and she’s still reaping the rewards from her initial advertising
campaign.
“We wanted the billboards to cause a
stir,” Harris says, “and it worked more than we ever expected.
“It was a tremendous boost to business.”
This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2005.
