New Off-Premises Signs Banned

Alders voted to limit the number of public advertisements in the city by prohibiting nearly all new off-premises signs, or signs that advertise a business located other than where the sign stands.

The vote came during Monday night’s full Board of Alders meeting in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.

The alders unanimously voted amended the city’s zoning regulations to eliminate mini-panels and poster signs as permitted uses in the New Haven Code of Ordinances.

The zoning text change ensures that all future advertisements put up in the city must be located either on the site of the business doing the advertising, or on a large bulletin or ​“spectacular” that points to a limited access highway, as opposed to pointing to a local street.

“There’s no more room,” Westville/Beaver Hills Alder Richard Furlow said about the need to limit the number of public advertisements in New Haven. Furlow was also the sponsor of the zoning amendment.

“As we’re becoming a more dense city, we can’t have all of these blinking signs on buildings advertising businesses” that are located elsewhere.

The amendment to Article V, Section 44.1 of the city’s code of ordinances removes all mentions of mini-panels and posters from the section on ​“Off premises signs.”

Click here to review a copy of the zoning text change.

An off-premises sign is defined as sign that directs attention to a business, commodity, industry or other activity which is sold, offered or conducted elsewhere than on the premises upon which the sign is located.

Before the change, the ordinance described four types of off-premises signs: mini-panels, posters, bulletins and spectaculars.

While bulletins and spectaculars can be as large as 900 square feet and as tall as 30 feet, those larger signs are only allowed to be oriented towards a limited access highway. They cannot be placed on just any city street.

Mini-panels and posters, on the other hand, are typically three by eight feet and 12 by 25 feet respectively, and were allowed to be placed on local streets. Mini-panels were allowed in any zoning district by special exception, and posters were allowed in BA, BB, BE, IL and IH districts as of right.
​“We just don’t have any more room for it,” Furlow said about the smaller, and now prohibited, off-premises mini-panels and posters. ​“As economic development continues to boom, we just felt that it was not a good fit. We’re not New York City, where these signs are all over the place.”

“New Haven’s desnse pattern of development and the close proximity of residential to commercial districts make these kinds of signs inappropriate,” Westville Alder Adam Marchand said Mondaynight in support of the amendment. ​“Removing them from our zoning code will ensure no further examples will be installed in our great city.”

Furlow said the zoning change will not affect existing off-premises mini-panels and posters.

The move represents local legislators’ first legal action in response to some Westville neighbors’ confusion and irritation about the sudden appearance of a 230-square-foot, double-sided electronic billboard in BD Food Market and Deli’s parking lot at 1057 Whalley Ave.

Alders and the area’s state legislator, Pat Dillon, told residents that the billboard had been constructed as of right, and was therefore in compliance with city zoning law.

Towards the end of the state’s short legislative session in May, Dillon sponsored and shepherded through the General Assembly a statewide response to the new billboard. House Bill 5515, which was approved by both chambers of the General Assembly and signed by the governor at the end of May, empowers local zoning commissions throughout the state to regulate the brightness and illumination of advertising signs and billboards. Like the one on Whalley Avenue.

Thanks to Monday night’s vote in New Haven, new billboards like the one on Whalley Avenue are not permitted by the city. (All existing billboards, including the one in BD Market and Deli’s parking lot, are grandfathered into compliance with new city law and will not be affected by the zoning change.)

Furlow promised that the alders will take advantage of the passage of House Bill 5515 to pass a new ordinance in the future that regulates the brightness of illuminated public advertisements.

“Do you want to turn our city into a big advertisement?” Furlow said. ​“It seems like we have enough.”