Amherst, NY Home Business: Signage Rules (2026)

Amherst's two-tier home occupation system draws a hard line on signage. Under § 6-8-6B(1)(d), a Type 1 Home Occupation, the category that needs no ZBA approval, is barred from having 'no identification sign, display or advertising of the home occupation on the site or structures' at all. Only a Type 2 Home Occupation, which already requires special use approval from the Zoning Board of Appeals and biennial renewal by the Commissioner of Building, may post signage, and even then the allowance is narrow: § 6-8-6B(2)(b) permits no more than one unlighted sign, capped at two square feet, identifying the resident and the business, attached flat against the building.

A ground-mounted or pole sign is not contemplated by the text. The one exception is locational: such a sign may be placed in the required front yard along an arterial or collector street, but only with the Zoning Board of Appeals' approval as part of granting or renewing the Type 2 permit, tying the sign privilege directly to the same discretionary review that governs the underlying business use. Because the sign rule sits inside § 6-8-6 rather than the Ordinance's general sign article, a home occupation cannot rely on standard commercial or residential identification sign allowances elsewhere in the code; the two-square-foot, unlighted, flat-mounted limit is the ceiling regardless of what the district's general sign standards would otherwise permit for the property.