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HISTORY
The Tempe Sign Program represents the ideas and values of the community
itself. In most cases, the Council, citizen boards, and staff first tested the elements of
the Sign Ordinance as informal policies before being adopted into the City Code. This
brief history illustrates how these elements became the foundation of the program.
September 16, 1948
The City Council approved Zoning Ordinance 193. A single sentence
was included to prohibit intermittent or flashing forms of illumination. The City
Council’s adoption of this restriction may likely have been a reaction to the trend
toward animated, blinking, and flashing signage.
October 3, 1951
Zoning Ordinance 268 was passed by the City Council restricting the
placement of billboards to certain commercial and industrial zoning districts. This action
effectively eliminated the then popular "Burma Shave" style signs in Tempe.
Zoning Ordinance 268 also introduced the new concept of tying the
amount of building mounted signage to the linear frontage of the individual building, as
well as the notion that the height of signs should be regulated.
April 10, 1969
The City Council adopted Ordinance 550, creating the Design Review
Board, one of the first bodies of this type in the nation. The action delegated authority
to the citizen board to approve building elevations, site and landscape plans, as well as
on-site signage.
September 2, 1976
By this time the various sections of the Zoning Ordinance had
evolved into what was quickly becoming a successful sign program. The Design Review Board,
however, saw a need for better direction regarding uniform signage for shopping centers.
Ordinance 808 was adopted by the City Council in response to this
need. The ordinance addressed two concepts: sign packages and low-profile freestanding
signs.
The ordinance sought to require owners to develop a sign concept for
their shopping centers that would be uniformly applied to all tenants and complement the
overall architecture of the site. While this concept was originally directed at commercial
centers, it has been expanded to include industrial sites as well.
The ordinance also limited the height of freestanding signs to eight
feet and the number of such signs to no more than one per street frontage.
February 14, 1987
The Sign Ordinance was amended to include sections concerning
obsolete (nonconforming) signs, sign maintenance requirements, and specific illumination
details, as well as provide for a civic banner program. The effect of these additions was
to not only expand the scope of the program, but provide guidelines that were sensitive to
special circumstances. January 20, 2005
The Zoning
and Development Code was adopted by the City Council replacing Ordinance
808. |
