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When top-hatted dancers pulled the wraps off the new four-story Planters Peanuts sign in Times Square last month, the unwitting irony was rich. Today, agree both brokers and landlords, the prices for such signs verge on the nutty.
With advertisers paying as much as $2 million a year for just a place to hang their signs, the same landlords who once decried outdoor advertising as a scourge have embraced it as a major money-churner. So lucrative have the big signs become that they now exert a significant influence on the price, and even the design, of buildings in Times Square.
Meanwhile, while landlords reap windfalls from renting out their walls, concerns are growing in some circles. Office workers lament lost views, and some of the area's trademark tenants--the theater owners--claim they are being priced out of the market. "We were paying $25,000 a month for one sign, and the landlord told us it would be going up to $125,000," says Matthew Serino, president of Serino/Coyne Inc.,...