Loudoun County supervisors are looking to ease their rules governing signs amid complaints that the regulations are driving businesses to other counties.
Supervisor Stevens Miller, D-Dulles, said businesses in Loudoun consistently cite the “sign ordinance” — which restricts the number of corporate logos that can be placed on the same building — as a problem.
“It’s just ridiculous,” he said. “It doesn’t allow reasonable self-promotion. [Businesses] just want to be able to promote themselves in terms of advertising.”
Miller said the previous Board of Supervisors was not interested in pursuing the issue. When he sat on a zoning ordinance committee, the other members were more concerned with building houses and decided not to improve the sign rules, he said.
Local businesses have pushed hard recently against the sign regulations, Miller said. He said the initiative — to be presented at the board’s Tuesday meeting — is part of a larger effort to improve the county’s business environment.
“The time is right to do an economic development review,” he said.
Tony Howard, president of the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce, agreed that the ordinance was not business-friendly. Howard — the chamber president since 2006 — had served as the chief operating officer for the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce since 1999.
“I never heard anyone complaining about the sign ordinance in Fairfax,” he said.
Matthew A. Ward, senior vice president of the Alter Group, wrote a letter to the board in December citing the vacant office building at the Route 28-Route 606 interchange as a result of the restrictions.
“Without question, the primary contributing factor to the building’s current state of vacancy is the signage restrictions imposed under the current Loudoun code,” he wrote. “Specifically, the restriction to allow the placement of only one corporate logo on the facade of the building places our project at an extreme competitive disadvantage to our Northern Virginia neighbor in Fairfax County.”
The letter said the company lost building tenants KTA, Art Institute, Digicon to Fairfax because of the sign issue.
