Many jurisdictions ban off-premise signs. Usually this is to fight billboards which is a good thing. It has one unintentional consequence--everybody locates on the main roads.
If you are siting a business, you want people to be able to find it easily. This is obvious for retail businesses, but services also want to be seen, even manufacturers want delivery trucks and the like to find them easily.
If you ban off-premise signs the business locates down the main highway where there is still land available and they can have a sign on the busy artery.
Let me think, moving down the road where there is empty land and adding driveway connections, stoplights, et cetera was an insidious form of SPRAWL last time I checked. Isn't that what we are trying not to do as planners?
So what is a planner to do? We talk about creating walkable activity nodes or hubs, but we need to reconcile that with the economic reality that merchants and services need to be seen. By providing some kind of non-billboard 'out' in you ordinances, you can tuck some of the activity on a feeder road while still giving the businesses a visible presence on the main drag. As much as we'd like it to be walkable, we still have to acknowledge the motor vehicle is crucial to most commercial activity.
If you are siting a business, you want people to be able to find it easily. This is obvious for retail businesses, but services also want to be seen, even manufacturers want delivery trucks and the like to find them easily.
If you ban off-premise signs the business locates down the main highway where there is still land available and they can have a sign on the busy artery.
Let me think, moving down the road where there is empty land and adding driveway connections, stoplights, et cetera was an insidious form of SPRAWL last time I checked. Isn't that what we are trying not to do as planners?
So what is a planner to do? We talk about creating walkable activity nodes or hubs, but we need to reconcile that with the economic reality that merchants and services need to be seen. By providing some kind of non-billboard 'out' in you ordinances, you can tuck some of the activity on a feeder road while still giving the businesses a visible presence on the main drag. As much as we'd like it to be walkable, we still have to acknowledge the motor vehicle is crucial to most commercial activity.
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