Published: November 14, 2008
The first eco-friendly billboard is coming to Times Square, entirely powered by the sun and the wind -- but there is one small catch.
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
An eco-friendly billboard will be installed above the Chase sign at 7th Avenue and 42nd Street.
Gigante Vaz Partners NYC
The billboard, seen in a rendering, will have four 45-foot stacks of wind turbines to power it.
When there's no sun, and no wind? The $3 million billboard goes dark: there is no backup generator.
"We think if that happens, it's just fine," said Ron Potesky, a senior marketing vice president for Ricoh Americas Corporation, the office equipment and document-storage supplier that owns the sign.
The billboard -- traditionally called a "spectacular" on the Great White Way -- weighs in at 35,000 pounds. It will be 55 feet off the ground at 3 Times Square, wrapping around the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.
Fitted with 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels, the sign will be "a first for Times Square," said Barry E. Winston, a Times Square billboard consultant not involved in the Ricoh project, who has been a sign expert for more than 50 years.
Wind turbines for the vast sign, which is 126 feet wide and 47 feet high, have arrived in a warehouse in Deer Park, N.Y., where preliminary testing is being done. Construction will begin this month, for a lighting ceremony on Dec. 4.
Ricoh would not say how much it was paying for its three-year lease, but based on recent deals, the lease would most likely cost in the low six figures, as much as $200,000 a month, according to sign rental experts who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are contractually forbidden to make public statements.
Such a cost would not be unusual for a sign across the avenue from 1 Times Square, where the ball drops on New Year's Eve.
By generating its own electricity -- enough to light six homes for a year -- the sign could save as much as $12,000 to $15,000 per month, according to Ricoh, which estimated that the sign would prevent 18 tons of carbon from being spewed into the air yearly.
The "passive" sign is not studded with light-emitting diodes like so many others in Times Square, but will be lighted by 16 300-watt floodlights. It will feature custom-printed opaque vinyl sheeting bearing the red-and-white Ricoh logo. The sign will be green, nevertheless, a message "to customers, other companies and the world that resources and energy can be used creatively," Mr. Potesky said. "The point is that there are ways of being environmentally friendly to the planet, even on a billboard."
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/nyregion/15billboard.html?_r=2&oref=slogin