Shoreline, WA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Shoreline Municipal Code Chapter 20.50 treats billboards as a distinct, disfavored sign category. Under SMC section 20.50.550, subsection C flatly prohibits "outdoor off-premises advertising signs (billboards)" alongside pole signs, roof signs and backlit awnings, so no new billboard, digital or static, can be permitted anywhere in Shoreline, including along Aurora Avenue/SR 99. Billboards that predate the current code are addressed separately in SMC section 20.50.590(B), Nonconforming signs: they are "declared nonconforming and may remain," but subsection B keeps them frozen in place. They cannot be increased in size or elevation, nor relocated, and subsection B(2) singles out digital upgrades: "Installation of electronic changing message or reader boards in existing billboards is prohibited." That bar is separate from the narrower exception in SMC section 20.50.550(A)(2), which lets on-premises electronic reader boards run in CB and MB zones if messages hold at least 20 seconds; that exception applies to a business's own building or monument sign, never to an off-premises billboard structure.

Existing billboards must otherwise be "kept in good repair and maintained" under subsection B(3), and subsection B(4) requires removal of any outdoor advertising sign that fails these restrictions "within 30 days of the date when an order by the City to remove such sign is given." The Planning and Community Development Department administers sign compliance and issues that removal order; a billboard owner who ignores it faces the general Title 20 enforcement track under SMC section 20.30.770.