Daniel Rubin: Some illumination on lighted signs needed

Mary Tracy sent out a cyber call to arms recently. She was rallying the citizenry to blast Councilman Frank DiCicco with e-mails, letting him know that his bill to brighten the few dim blocks of East Market Street with fancy building wraps and digital displays was a disaster in waiting.

Is she wrong to envision Las Vegas by the Delaware? Tracy, head of SCRUB, Public Voice for Public Space, has long had religion when it comes to billboards. She started as a young mother in Overbrook Farms, successfully battling Clear Channel over an illegal advertisement for some monster movie that scared the pants off her children.

Since then, the former schoolteacher has helped take down ads that line the city's gateways, erase corporate graffiti, and peel off the tiny "8 sheets" that pock poor neighborhoods like broken windows - signals that no one much cares.

DiCicco's bill would wrap ads around buildings that beg for restoration and renewal, she says. So much money would come from these signs, she says, that landlords would have no incentive to fill the interiors with people.

What's really spurring DiCicco's legislation, Tracy suspects, is a casino industry that frets that its riverside slot machines will be anchored too far from Center City foot traffic.

Looking down from her office perch 16 floors above 13th and Walnut, she mimics the gaming industry's worries: "How are people going to know we're having a special buffet? Or that we're selling necklaces in our gift shop?"

DiCicco bristles at Tracy's attack. They're old adversaries. He says his legislation has nothing to do with casinos and everything to do with re-creating some of the dynamism he remembers from the East Market Street of his youth.

"This is how [opponents] get everyone riled up," he said. "This legislation is because we don't want East Market Street to be a graveyard after 5 at night. What bothers me is, as soon as someone mentions we are going to change something in Philadelphia, the doomsday people come out in droves and say, 'We don't want this.' . . . This bill says 'Let's have a conversation about the current situation of Market Street, and could signage help?' "

His Bill No. 100013 would amend the Philadelphia zoning and planning code to allow outdoor signs on Market between Seventh and 13th Streets, creating a commercial advertising district.

Tracy worked hard to support that code, which in 1991 became one of the country's toughest controls on what she calls the renegade outdoor-advertising industry.

One of her objections is that the DiCicco legislation could allow ads that have nothing to do with the buildings they're fixed to. That robs "your sense of place," as she put it. Philadelphia works for pedestrians, she says, because it's distinctive. "This isn't Times Square. This isn't Las Vegas. We're Philadelphia."

Clearly something is needed for those dismal blocks - four sprawling surface parking lots, the barren facade of the Gallery, a mall that Paul Levy, head of the Center City District, describes as "pathbreaking in 1977." Or for the rows of low-lying retail spaces that command one-third the rents of those to be found on Walnut Street.

Levy's open to the sorts of eye-catching wraps, digital and LED signs that are popular in Europe and Asia, though he says the city must make sure they stimulate development.

Building owners shouldn't get to throw up a giant ad on a tiny decrepit storefront. They should only be able to profit from these signs - and thus generate tax revenue for the city - if they renovate their properties in line with city standards and fill them with people.

I asked Paco Underhill what he thought. He's the New York-based author of the best-selling books Why We Shop and Call of the Mall. He's a frequent visitor to Philadelphia, the home of his grandparents.

Underhill said he's a fan of the huge dynamic light and video displays he finds at public transportation hubs in Toyko, for instance, but those are installed in places people already amass. Philadelphia's proposed "Light District," he said, is putting the cart before the horse. In Tokyo, "it's a teeming mass to start out with, not 'Gee, if we build it, they will come.' "

The greatest show in all these sort of places, he said, is the people. Get people to live and shop there, and the place will come alive.

"If you're talking of reviving a downtown, there should be great public spaces. You need a cross section of ages and activities. There has to be a high degree of women, because women are discriminating about where they go, and finally, a great public place is where you see public affection, where people hold hands, hugging, and kissing. That is a sign of people feeling secure."

Sounds like the Gallery, no?

Seems to me the way you make a place vibrant isn't by bright lights or fancy covers, it's by creating distinctive attractions. This bill deserves a yellow light: Proceed with caution.