Rialto, CA Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

060(K) carves out a narrow exception to the city's normal sign rules for the Rialto Gateway Specific Plan area on the north side of Interstate 10. The city council adopted the carve-out because mature freeway trees in that stretch block ordinary business signage from motorists in both travel directions, so a single freeway-oriented sign structure is allowed to identify the Gateway area and display up to five individual business panels. The upper-most business sign panel is capped at one hundred feet above grade, and the overall sign structure, including its support framework, cannot exceed one hundred twenty feet above grade.

Total combined area of all business signs on the structure is capped at one thousand square feet, and no single business panel may exceed five hundred square feet. The planning commission reviews and approves the design and location of the structure before a building permit is issued, and it may reduce the approved height if a shorter structure would still clear the freeway trees. 060(J), the citywide off-site advertising (billboard) rules, which otherwise cap billboard structures at twenty-five feet and require them to sit at least one thousand feet from another billboard and outside a five-hundred-foot radius of homes, parks, schools, cemeteries or churches.

Outside the Gateway area, a business cannot erect a tall freeway-oriented sign under this provision at all; ordinary wall and freestanding signs for commercial and industrial zones remain governed by the base standards in subsections G through I of the same section.