Anaheim Auto Center dealers have put up a bigger sign off the Orange (57) Freeway.
“It’s a good source of advertising,” said Dennis Hardin, owner of four dealerships at the auto mall.
About 200,000 vehicles a day pass by the sign, which is 70 feet high and 28 feet wide. The sign is one exit north from the Honda Center, which has its own freeway sign, and Angel Stadium of Anaheim, which last year installed a display in the “Big A.”
The auto mall’s light-emitting diode sign replaced an older one using incandescent lights.
The new sign shows color graphics, unlike the old monochrome one.
The old sign “was old technology and became very expensive to maintain,” Hardin said.
The new display meets federal lighting standards, which require bulbs to be more efficient.
The regulation, signed into law three years ago by President George W. Bush, kicks in next January. California begins phasing out inefficient bulbs this year.
The Anaheim Auto Center Dealer Association, made up of six dealerships, paid more than $400,000 for the sign.
Hardin paid the most because he owns the majority of dealerships at the center.
He owns Hardin Hyundai, Hardin Buick GMC and Hardin Honda. Hardin also recently took over a closed Saturn dealership, where he now has a used Honda dealership.
Other members of the association are McPeek’s Dodge of Anaheim and Anaheim Mitsubishi.
The dealers share costs for marketing, tent sales, security and other items.
“The new sign will enable us to generate more sales, which in turn will bring significantly more sales tax to the city of Anaheim,” Hardin wrote in a 2008 letter to the city.
The city’s Planning Commission approved the sign in late 2008.
Lawndale-based Electra Media Inc., which built the auto center’s original sign, did the new one.
It’s the third big sign to go up along the Orange (57) Freeway in Anaheim in recent years.
Last year, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim spent $1 million to add a color sign to the middle of the “Big A” in the parking lot of their baseball stadium.
In 2006, the neighboring Honda Center added a video board in its parking lot alongside the freeway.
