New limits proposed for size of business signs

Dan Kulin

Thursday, Nov. 21, 2002 | 9:49 a.m.

Hoping to reduce what North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon calls "vertical pollution," the City Council is set to adopt an ordinance that would set limits for height and size of signs within the city.

Under the proposed law, new signs could be no taller than 35 feet and no larger than 400 square feet.

Now, the signs can be 60-feet tall, and sign size is based on how long a property's border with the road is, Stephen Baxter, acting director of the Development Services Department. Signs are allowed to be one square foot for every foot of road frontage, he said.

The proposed ordinance was read into the record during the Wednesday council meeting and is scheduled for a council vote on Dec. 4. Montandon said he thinks the ordinance will pass.

Made public early this year, the draft ordinance upset some developers because it proposed limiting signs to 20-feet tall in commercial districts and prohibited new signs from being hoisted high into the air on a pole in favor of so-called monument signs, which are based on the ground.

City staff, business owners and representatives for the sign industry met to discuss the proposed ordinance, and ended up with a "happy medium," said Robert Gronauer, an attorney with Kummer Kaempfer Bonner & Renshaw, which had a representative meet with city staff members on the matter.

In addition to higher limits on sign height than originally proposed, the latest version of the proposal also would allow pole signs if the poles are covered in some way, Baxter said.

Montandon said, "I'm a huge fan of monument signs ... but here, with the casino industry here it's the bigger the better.

"We had what I consider vertical pollution. Those pole signs look like lollipops and there's nothing worse than when they're empty. I asked for monument signs but (the sign industry) wanted 70-foot signs. ... I think it's a great end result but it's definitely a compromise."