Glendale Planning Commissioners gave a thumbs-down Thursday to a recommendation to approve digital billboards along Loop 101 near the sports and entertainment district.

The proposed amendment to a zoning ordinance next goes to the City Council, which has the final say. Planning staff had recommended approval to the commission. The vote was 4-3 to not recommend.

Senior planner Thomas Ritz said up to 19 digital billboards, which include two at the city’s park-and-ride lot and two others approved but not yet erected, could take root along a 3-mile stretch of Loop 101 from Northern Avenue to Camelback Road.

Commissioner Rod Williams said he was concerned that the signs would grab drivers’ attention and cause accidents. The signs and the lights already in the Westgate City Center area would be a “distraction to the driving public,” Williams said.

And although he would like to more areas in the city have the signs, Commissioner Gary Sherwood also ended up voting against the proposal.

“I’m pro-digital billboards. I think it’s a great thing,” Sherwood said.

But he struggled with the staff requirement that anyone who wanted to construct a digital billboard in Glendale would first need to remove four existing signs in the city.

Staff explained this was an attempt to reduce the concentration of older signs dotting Grand Avenue and the Centerline project area along Glendale Avenue.

Sherwood saw the restriction as prohibiting new sign companies from doing business in Glendale. The other no votes came from Commissioners William Shaffer and Robert Petrone.

Chairman John Kolodzieji supported the regulations, although he, too, felt the requirement cited by Sherwood was unfair to new companies.

He said in his drive to work along Loop 101 and Interstate 10 to central Phoenix, he has yet to see one accident around any of the billboard signs erected on those two freeways.

Ron Rovey, a member of a longtime farming family with land interests in Glendale, also opposed several proposed regulations as unfair.

He objected to the requirement that the first phase of development must be completed before a sign can be erected. Staff revised that from the original requirement of 125,000 square feet of development, which met opposition when it was introduced last year.

Rovey said that stipulation would preclude his family from having digital billboards for “many, many years in the future until there is development in the area, and who knows when that will come.”

Ritz explained the requirement was to ensure the continual development of the city’s sports and entertainment district.

Rovey also said staff should allow billboards, capped at 60 feet high in the proposal, to be 80 feet high, just like the two revenue-generating signs at the city’s property.

“That would give fairness and equality for other signs in the area,” he said.

Joseph White also voiced his concerns.

“The biggest issue I would have as a small billboard company in Phoenix is it’s impossible for any company to ever do business with Glendale under this ordinance,” White said.

Planning staff has worked on the regulations since last year but pulled it from consideration in November after the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld a ban on the digital billboards along state and federal highways.

However, in December Phoenix approved regulations for digital billboards, prompting Glendale to move forward, Ritz said.

Ritz said American Outdoor Advertising has crafted legislation to amend the state law that would allow for digital billboards along freeways. The bill made it out of the House and heads to the Senate for a vote, he said.