SCRANTON — The owner of a two-sided billboard at 320 Mulberry St. downtown is suing the city to overturn its denial of converting the sign from static to digital displays.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Lackawanna County Court, Kegerreis Outdoor Advertising of Chambersburg claims the city missed its own deadline for Scranton City Council to uphold an advisory opinion by the city’s Historical Architecture Review Board rejecting the digital displays. The untimely action by council created a “deemed approval” of the digital billboards, according to the lawsuit.
The city has not yet responded in court to the lawsuit. City Solicitor Jessica Eskra on Friday said the city had no comment on the pending litigation.
The Kegerreis firm, which recently bought the sign structure that was erected in 2012 without zoning approval, sought HARB approval in February for the conversion of the two sign faces into rotating LED digital signs.
A billboard at 320 Mulberry St. in Scranton in May of 2012. (IMAGE SCREEN GRAB / GOOGLE STREET VIEW)
At the February HARB meeting, Scott Kegerreis said his company already had removed both static signs and installed one digital sign facing west, before the city issued a stop-work order. Kegerreis thought the prior owner received the appropriate permits from the city for the conversion of static signs to digital, but there was a “giant miscommunication.”
He said officials told him to go before HARB, and if it said yes, then the digital billboards would be permissible. HARB initially tabled the application in February for further review and then rejected it in March.
Scott Kegerreis of Kegerreis Outdoor Advertising speaks about a billboard at 320 Mulberry St. in Scranton during the city’s Historical Architecture Review Board meeting on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. (IMAGE SCREEN GRAB / ELECTRIC CITY TELEVISION VIA YOUTUBE)
That rejection went to Scranton City Council in May, in the form of a resolution from the administration of Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, for council to uphold or reverse the advisory opinion of HARB.
On May 13, council backed HARB in a 5-0 vote — with council President Gerald Smurl, Bill King, Mark McAndrew, Jessica Rothchild and Tom Schuster all in favor — to introduce a resolution accepting HARB’s denial of a conversion of the static signs on the two-sided structure into digital signs. Council then adopted the resolution at a May 22 meeting, with Smurl, Rothchild and Schuster voting in favor of it, and King and McAndrew absent.
Kegerreis’ lawsuit takes the form of a “mandamus” complaint, which claims that because the city missed its own “45-working-day” deadline under the city code to act upon the HARB decision, the court must mandate that the digital signs are approved and the city must provide the permits to Kegerreis for the digital conversion.
Council received HARB’s written decision on March 14 and the 45-day deadline expired May 16, but council’s vote on adoption did not occur until May 22, according to the lawsuit.
“Where the board fails to render the decision within the period required … the decision shall be deemed to have been rendered in favor of the applicant,” the lawsuit says.
It also contends that the issuing of a permit is purely ministerial and does not involve any discretion by the city, Kegerreis has a clear right to the permit via the deemed approval and the city has a corresponding duty to issue the permit.
The lawsuit seeks a writ of mandamus compelling the city to approve the digital billboards.
A two-sided billboard at 320 Mulberry St. in Scranton on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in front of the north wall of a four-story building along Oakford Court and that fronts on 317 Linden St. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)