Prominent Billboard at CES Attacks LG Electronics Over Palisades
Will LG Electronics remote CEO focus on the mounting controversy at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas?
Campaign billboard grabs attention during biggest annual tech event
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 9, 2014 At the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week (January 7-10), a prominent billboard message, Dont Let LG Spoil the Palisades, greeted 150,000 participants including 40,000 senior-level executives. One executive in particular who the sponsoring coalition ProtectThePalisades.org sought to reach is the LG Electronics CEO, the usually faraway head of the giant global TV and electronics maker based in Seoul, South Korea.
According to the coalition, CEO Bon-Joon Koo may still be largely unaware of how much damage LG would cause, including permanently to its reputation, if LG proceeds with its current plan to erect a new HQ high above the Palisades Park and Hudson River north of the George Washington Bridge. By building four times higher than what long-time zoning has allowed, LG would spoil the picture enjoyed by millions the unbroken natural sweep extending for miles upstream, seen from parks, parkways, cultural institutions and communities in both New Jersey and New York. LGs building would overturn more than a century of conservation success begun by then Governor Theodore Roosevelt and the New Jersey Womens Federation.
The Protect the Palisades coalition also believes that LGs CEO may not realize that rather than sacrifice an American Landmark, LG can gain a splendid headquarters with the same office space and jobs on its large 27-acre site, by building below the tree-line height respected by all other companies. Thats the win-win alternative called for by four former governors of New Jersey; the U.S. EPA; editorial boards including the New York Times; leading cultural and civic institutions and many others.
Protect the Palisades hopes that the LG Electronics CEO will choose this win-win option and see LG celebrated as an environmental hero.