Colonie, NY Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

Town Code § 190-84(C) places five separate location restrictions on billboards, and the arterial-roadway setback is the broadest of them. Under § 190-84(C)(1), new billboards may only go up in the Industrial District, with side setbacks of at least 25 feet, front setbacks of at least 50 feet, and rear setbacks of at least 25 feet, all measured from the property line. Layered on top of that zoning limit, § 190-84(C)(5) bars any billboard from being constructed, erected, or altered within 660 feet of the edge of the right-of-way of any primary arterial roadway, though normal maintenance of an existing structure and changing the advertising copy are both carved out of that prohibition.

The same subsection also requires billboards to sit at least 300 feet apart from each other, unless arranged back-to-back or at an angle, at least 200 feet from any public park, playground, cemetery, or residential zone, and at least 25 feet from any building. Because the arterial setback measures from the right-of-way edge rather than the roadway centerline, a wide highway shoulder or a state-owned frontage strip can push the effective no-build zone further from the traveled way than 660 feet suggests at first glance.

A billboard that already stood within that band before the article's effective date is treated as legally nonconforming under § 190-84(F) and may remain, provided the owner still files for the article's annual renewal permit; it may not be reconstructed or structurally altered, and if removed it can only be reestablished within six months on the identical footprint.