Owensboro, KY Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

Section 9-5(g) of the joint Owensboro-Daviess County Zoning Ordinance lets a retail shopping center with combined retail space zoned B-3 Highway Business or B-4 General Business, and containing a minimum of fifteen contiguous acres, put up one freestanding consolidated shopping center sign on each street frontage along a freeway, an arterial, or a collector street. The sign must sit on a lot within the approved final development plan and cannot obstruct sight distance. The maximum sign face area is 672 square feet per side, and the maximum height equals ten feet plus one-half the horizontal distance to the nearest boundary of any residential or MHP-zoned property, capped at 80 feet.

Before the Zoning Administrator will issue a building permit, the property owner must record an easement by plat dedicating the sign location and submit an approved maintenance plan along with a final development plan showing the sign's placement. Any additional yard signs on the same lot exceeding 10 square feet and sitting within 25 feet of the public right-of-way must be spaced at least 100 feet from the consolidated sign and from each other. Enforcement runs through the Zoning Administrator under Zoning Ordinance Section 9-8, with variances and appeals routed to the Owensboro Metropolitan Board of Adjustment per Article VII.

Owensboro separately bans new off-premises commercial billboards inside city limits under Ordinance No. 53-89, codified at Municipal Code Section 18-10, but that ban does not reach these on-premises consolidated shopping center signs.