Sofia City Hall to Dismantle Illegal Billboards

The Chief Architect of Bulgaria's capital Sofia, Petar Dikov, promises that all illegal billboards in the city will be taken down and replaced by new ones, approved through public tenders. Photo by BGNES

The Chief Architect of Bulgaria's capital Sofia, Petar Dikov, announced Thursday that the Sofia City Hall will establish new rules about billboards by the end of the year.

The Sofia Municipal Council has approved the rules of conducting public tenders to lend public property for the location of advertising billboards in the city.

Meanwhile, the illegal advertisements will be taken down and the advertising agencies will have to reapply through public tenders to use the space.

The goal is to finally regulate the billboards in the city and increase the City Hall budget significantly by using the potentially large profits from the advertising business.

Dikov says that the new billboards can be expected by the last quarter of 2010.