Billboard's future uncertain as Richmond designates Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground a cemetery

Richmond’s Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground got more legal protection Tuesday night as the City Council voted to formally designate the area as a cemetery. But the company that has a billboard on the site said it still expects the city to provide a more suitable advertising location to replace the one it’s losing.

The billboard has recently come under fire from Mayor Levar Stoney and local activists for continuing to tarnish a site where free and enslaved African people were buried between 1816 and 1879. 

The area in question, which is next to several other cemeteries on Shockoe Hill, was left unpreserved and open to intrusions from development and the nearby highways that also made it a desirable spot for a billboard. An old gas station building on the site now bears a message informing passers-by about its history.

“This long invisible burial ground has been harmed and desecrated time and time again throughout its history,” Lenora McQueen, a woman who traced one of her ancestors to the burial ground, told the council before Tuesday’s vote. “Please do more to protect the rest.”

Lamar Advertising said it didn’t oppose the action by Mayor Levar Stoney’s administration and the City Council to declare the city-owned land at 1305 N. 5th St. a cemetery. That action would presumably make the billboard illegal because advertising in cemeteries is prohibited. However, the exact impact on the billboard — which Lamar has already stopped running ads on — is unclear.

In a written statement to city officials, Lamar reiterated that the billboard is there because the city approved it more than 20 years before asking the company to give it up. Another meeting with Stoney in July, the company said, focused on two locations. But the city also ruled that proposal unacceptable.

Lamar said it had been working with the Stoney administration in a “good faith” effort to resolve the matter. The company said it first offered six alternative billboard sites last December, all of which the city rejected.

“Lamar rebuilt the Fifth Street billboard more than two decades ago with the City Staff's approval of a building permit and direct supervision on site during construction,” the company said in its statement. “We concur with Mayor Stoney when he said in a recent statement in a Washington Post article, ‘the City of Richmond is the only one to blame for this.’”

After implying the Stoney administration rebuffed its efforts to reach an agreeable solution, Lamar said it intends to continue working on the matter with Mayor-Elect Danny Avula and will transfer its property easement and the billboard to the city “once a mutually acceptable replacement location is found.”

“Lamar looks forward to working with Mayor Elect Avula, Councilwoman Robertson and the new City Council to find common ground and arrive at a mutually agreeable resolution,” the company said.

The city and the advertising company offered conflicting accounts on how the negotiations went.

Stoney has publicly accused the company of trying to maximize its profits by seeking six billboards in exchange for the one that stands in the way of efforts to preserve the cemetery. Chip Dicks, an attorney with Gentry Locke who represents Lamar, said that wasn’t the case.

“The discussions with city staff were always six options for one replacement location in exchange for the one billboard,” Dicks said in an email. “I confirmed this was the case when I met with the mayor. He and I have an understanding on this point.” 

City officials disputed that characterization, pointing to an email a Lamar representative sent in late 2023 that mentioned “a total of 6 project locations” that Lamar “wants in exchange” for giving up the Shockoe Hill billboard.

When asked for a comment Tuesday, Stoney’s office said he’d have more to say after the council vote.

The council didn’t publicly discuss the issue Tuesday and approved the cemetery designation as part of its consent agenda, which involves uncontroversial or routine items approved in a block vote.