Ankeny, IA Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

Section 192.02 of the Ankeny Code of Ordinances requires site plan approval before a building permit or certificate of occupancy issues for most new construction, and subsection 3.A.(8) sets the city's exterior lighting standard as part of that plan review. The text requires that exterior lighting, when used, enhance the building design and the adjoining landscape, that it be appropriate to the use of the building and surrounding properties with intensity limited to its intended use, and specifically that it not serve as an attraction to the site.

The operative light-trespass rule follows directly: lighting must be directed to eliminate impacts on adjoining sites. Because this sits inside the general site plan design standards of Section 192.02(3), it applies citywide to any site-plan-triggered development rather than to just one zoning district, and it is reviewed alongside the section's parking, screening, landscaping, and building-material standards rather than as a stand-alone lighting ordinance with its own footcandle table. A developer whose photometric plan shows glare or illumination spilling past the property line onto a neighboring site does not meet this standard, and the Planning and Building Department can withhold site plan approval, which in turn blocks the building permit and certificate of occupancy required under Section 192.02(2), until the fixtures are redirected, shielded, or reduced.

Because Ankeny frames this as a design and site-plan standard rather than a numeric lux limit, enforcement after occupancy runs through the same site plan compliance mechanism rather than a separate nuisance-lighting citation.