Linden, NJ Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

10(c), is Linden's billboard ordinance, and it applies only in the City's three industrial zoning districts, L-I, L-1A and H-I, the areas that front the New Jersey Turnpike and Routes 1&9 near the petrochemical works. The section states that billboards are permitted as a freestanding sign in those zones, but only as the principal use of the lot, meaning a billboard cannot simply share a lot with an unrelated industrial building; the site has to be dedicated to the billboard itself. The dimensional standards are specific: height is capped at 35 feet measured from grade to the billboard's highest point, the sign face must clear the ground by at least 25 feet, the sign area cannot exceed 120 square feet, and the sign cannot be wider than 12 feet.

Billboards must sit at least 1,000 feet from any other billboard, and every part of the structure, including support posts, must be set back at least 15 feet from any structure, property line or street right-of-way. No more than two sign faces are permitted, and if there are two they must be back to back and parallel, with no angle between them. Two provisions specifically protect residential neighbors from a billboard's highway-facing glare and message: no billboard message may be readable with the naked eye from any residential property, and no light from a billboard may add to the measurable existing light on residential property.

3(c) bars any series of two or more signs placed in a line parallel to the highway all carrying a single advertisement message, the sequential roadside-sign pattern, citywide. Billboards must also comply with the state Roadway Signs Outdoor Advertising Act and cannot be erected without approval and a license from the New Jersey Department of Transportation for that specific location. 11, allows billboards up to 75 square feet mounted flat on the side or rear wall of a building in the C-1, C-2, C-L, L-I, L-1A and H-I Zones, rather than freestanding along the highway.