The city of Spokane says its sign code, which hasn't undergone a thorough review since the 1950s, needs to be updated to reflect new sign technology.

The city's planning services department is working to update the sign code, and the Spokane Plan Commission has conducted a public hearing on the topic and plans to forward a recommendation to the City Council, says Ken Pelton, a city planner. The changes are focused on on-premise signs, both permanent and temporary, located on the site of the business the sign serves, and not on off-premise signs such as billboards.

The city has public-safety concerns about electronic signs with changing image features, which can be too animated and flash too much, distracting drivers, he says. The approach in the draft sign code is to limit their size, brightness, and message duration.

The draft sign code also places limits on the size, height, and number of signs in business, commercial, and industrial zones, he says. The current sign code for those zones doesn't impose such limits.

For office, office-retail, neighborhood-retail, and community-business zones, the sign code would allow larger signs than what current code allows, he says.

The size of signs attached to buildings would be based on the horizontal length of the primary wall of a building. Pelton says the draft code would allow one square foot of sign per foot of the primary wall on a building. Slightly more space would be allowed if there were no freestanding signs on the site, Pelton says.

For multiple ground-floor tenant spaces the draft code also would provide a minimum guaranteed sign area, he says.

The draft code would reduce the maximum height of freestanding signs in most zoning categories, he says.

The city also is trying to establish new standards for temporary or portable signs—such as construction, real estate, special event, balloon, and sandwich-board signs—something a lot of businesses here use, Pelton says.

The city's current sign code is vague in terms of its treatment of temporary signs, he says. The draft code attempts to provide simplicity and clarity in those standards, Pelton says.

The purpose of the draft code on temporary signs is to avoid visual clutter that is potentially hazardous to traffic and pedestrian safety and blocks sidewalks, he says.

Overall, the draft code works to provide sign communication, while also avoiding nuisances to nearby properties, promoting an attractive environment, and preventing signs from dominating the appearance of an area, he says.

The plan commission's public hearing was Nov. 12, Pelton says.

"The plan commission could make a lot of changes to this (draft) before forwarding this on to the City Council," he says.