Kiwanis, Key Clubs, and The Ingenuity Festival

Upcoming.org: Kiwanis meets Ingenuity at Holy Name Church and Rectory (Wednesday, March 7, 2007)
Click on the link for the map and to indicate whether you'll be attending, bringing a guest, or just watching. This is the first scheduled speaker of the 2007 series. The event:

Speakers at the Kiwanis Club of South East Cleveland are Jerry Seppelt, Kiwanis Division 15 lieutenant governor, and Rich Weiss, assistant director of The 2007 Ingenuity Festival (http://www.ingenuitycleveland.com/). They will outline the new synergies being formed between the Kiwanis Key Clubs (high-school groups) and the Festival, taking community service to the next level. If you are planning on attending, please indicate that here on the Upcoming.org site and also confirm your reservations with Gloria at 216-351-0254 by Tuesday, March 6th, at noon.

Tony Brancatelli gets press in last Saturday's Wall Street Journal

In Billboard War, Digital Signs Spark a Truce - WSJ.com --I just got this article about Tony Brancatelli, one of our club members, from Ellen Psenicka, another club member, over at the Neighborhood News. You can read the entire article by clicking the lead-in to this paragraph, but here's an excerpt:

One of Cleveland's longtime billboard foes is community activist Tony Brancatelli, 49. He has worked most of his life to clean up his working-class neighborhood of Slavic Village, plagued by boarded-up buildings and suburban flight. One big goal: tearing down the billboards littering Broadway, a major local artery.

For years, he tried to help property owners find a way to nullify their billboard contracts, which sometimes had decades-long terms. That often meant sparring with executives working for billboard concern Eller Media. The contracts usually held. When Clear Channel acquired Eller in 1997, Mr. Brancatelli feared the acquisition would only make his adversaries more formidable.

Two years later, in February 1999, the company took the city of Cleveland to court twice. First it challenged a city ordinance banning alcohol advertising, and then it accused Cleveland of unfairly targeting its billboards in a city inspection that cited hundreds of boards for code violations.
The city lost the first case. A settlement in the second case, among other things, created legislation allowing digital boards. Like traditional boards, each new digital board had to first be approved by city government.

Mr. Brancatelli's worst tussle with Clear Channel came in 2001. He says he and his lawyer repeatedly asked Clear Channel to take down a billboard that was blocking construction of a Boys & Girls Club. Under the original contract, the billboard could be removed if construction was planned on the land where it stood. Mr. Brancatelli says company representatives spent months dithering and kept demanding a new location to put up a new board, even though the contract made no provision for a replacement.

Clear Channel says Slavic Village misinterpreted the contract.

Fed up, Mr. Brancatelli headed to the billboard, grabbed a saw and attacked, say people familiar with the matter. With construction equipment idling just feet away, Mr. Brancatelli sawed at the metal pins holding the board in place until it collapsed, these people say. "I will never admit to taking down a billboard," Mr. Brancatelli now says. "I will admit to evicting them off our real estate."
Clear Channel says it has worked with Mr. Brancatelli in the past, donating billboard space over the years to Slavic Village as well as other Cleveland groups.

A few years passed. Then Clear Channel wanted to put up a digital board in an area bordering Slavic Village. In contrast to prior encounters, Clear Channel officials approached Slavic Village leaders eagerly, behaving as if the head-butting hadn't happened. "It was very clear they wanted to deal," Mr. Brancatelli says.

Clear Channel's president of outdoor ads in Cleveland, Bill Platko, recalls telling local billboard foes: "We have an opportunity where we both can win."

In January 2005, Slavic Village and other Cleveland neighborhood officials began elaborate discussions with Clear Channel. To put up a digital board, Clear Channel proposed to take two traditional boards down, as city law requires.

The community leaders knew digital billboards are very profitable. Marlane Weslian, Slavic Village's development officer, reasoned that adding one board represented a vast expansion of advertising in the neighborhood. By rotating an ad through every eight seconds, Clear Channel could have over seven advertisers a minute on that board.

The neighborhood groups asked for 25 traditional boards to come down, including boards on busy roads. Clear Channel balked.

By March, a compromise was reached. For Clear Channel to get its digital board, five traditional boards would come down on major roads in Slavic Village, and five more in other city areas. Clear Channel cut similar deals in three other parts of Cleveland.

The compromise allows Slavic Village to claim victory. Mr. Brancatelli says the Clear Channel negotiations were a "tipping point" that has bettered his relationship with the company. Another city councilman, Joe Cimperman, adds that when Clear Channel approaches the city now, they "don't cue up the music to Darth Vader."

The compromise is a win for Clear Channel, too. Because the advertiser shares the board with others, the rates for a digital display run slightly under the $8,000 to $10,000 per month that Clear Channel would typically charge for a highwayside billboard in Cleveland, says a spokesman. But now the company collects revenue from seven companies instead of one.

Today, the company has seven digital billboards up in the Cleveland area, including three outside city limits. They blink through a steady stream of advertisements for clients ranging from a Fox TV affiliate to a local Ford dealer. The pictures come up slide-show style, with no animation or video, and flip over to a new advertiser every eight seconds.

To further court its critics, Clear Channel recently expanded programs that donate free billboard space for Cleveland's nonprofits. In December, it launched a new program that allows city officials to take control of the boards and put up so-called Amber Alerts, which alert the public to possible child abductions.

Amber Alert "changes the dynamics of the relationship" with Cleveland," says Clear Channel's Mr. Mays. "It's billboards used in a way that meshes with our strategic goals," adds Bob Brown, director of Cleveland's planning department.

minutes of the meeting held January 31st