New York Times

October 22, 2000, Sunday

By TARA BAHRAMPOUR

Billboard Foes Yearn to Breathe Free Without Its Presence

Looming over northbound traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, visible from the Brooklyn Heights promenade, two children stare out from a red-tinted billboard depicting a clogged freeway and bearing this statement: ''Immigration is doubling U.S. population in our lifetimes.''

A year after it removed its billboards that urged immigration restrictions from sites in Queens and Brooklyn, ProjectUSA is back. But the Port Authority, which owns the Civil War-era building on Furman Street that is the site of the organization's newest billboard, said it was never consulted on its content. It has ordered the billboard company, Infinity Outdoor Signage, to remove it.

''Our expectation is that it will be down in a few days,'' said Peter Yerkes, a spokesman for the authority. ''If somebody is going to put up a billboard on our property, we need to know what it is going to say.''

He added that the contract with Infinity says it cannot put a new ad up without notifying the authority. ''They didn't do that, so we told them to take it down,'' he said.

Mr. Yerkes said that the 20-by-60-foot billboard was subleased through three companies, and that Infinity was unaware of the rule. On Oct. 10, three days after the billboard went up, an authority employee noticed it and told his superiors.

Craig Nelsen, the president of ProjectUSA, said he had not heard about the Port Authority's request for the sign's removal. If the sign comes down, he said, it would be ''an assault on our cherished cultural tradition of free speech,'' and he would explore legal recourse.

Across the country recently, the group has put up billboards calling for a moratorium on immigration, prompting outcries in several states.

ProjectUSA paid $10,000 for a month's lease at the site, Mr. Nelsen said.

Last year, he said, two were removed ahead of schedule when the billboard company, Seaboard, asked to be released from its contract after a public furor over them. Paul Wein, a spokesman for the Department of Buildings, said one or two of last year's signs were found not to have proper permits.

Several elected officials condemned the latest sign.

''It's a real shame that a billboard like this should be facing opposite the Statue of Liberty,'' Councilman Kenneth K. Fisher said. ''It's a shame that it would be in a neighborhood that was built by immigrants."