Arcadia, CA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

The City of Arcadia, California has no digital billboard category. It prohibits billboards altogether. Section 9103.11.050(C) bars the construction, erection or use of off-site signs displaying off-site commercial messages (billboards), other than those that legally exist in the City, or for which a valid permit was issued and had not expired, on the date the provision was first adopted. The code says it adopts the policy in compliance with California Government Code section 65850 and Business and Professions Code Sections 5354(a) and 5408.3. Permits are not issued for off-site signs that violate the policy, and the City takes immediate abatement action against signs built or maintained in violation.

The Council declared the billboard policy severable and separately enforceable, and the section does not prohibit agreements to relocate existing, legal off-site signs. A Comprehensive Sign Program cannot be used to override the ban (§ 9103.11.130(C)). Existing off-site commercial signs are nonconforming under § 9103.11.160: a legal nonconforming sign cannot be structurally changed to another nonconforming sign, structurally altered to prolong its life except to meet safety requirements, or expanded or altered in any manner that increases the degree of nonconformity, and existing legal billboards must be removed when the property is further developed.

Electronic signs are a separate, on-site category. Under § 9103.11.080(A), electronic changeable message signs are allowed only for institutional uses, gas station price signs and Chamber of Commerce signs. Images cannot change more often than the sign's permit allows, must change instantaneously with no special effects or video, and no moving, animated, scrolling, oscillating or rotating images are permitted. The sign needs a photometric sensor that adjusts intensity for day and night, nighttime intensity is limited to 0.3 foot candles over ambient levels measured five feet above the ground at a distance between 150 and 350 feet depending on sign size, and the City can further restrict intensity if the lighting distracts drivers. Section 9103.11.050(R) separately prohibits video or projected signs created by projecting light onto a surface.