Roanoke, VA Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

2-675 governs every off-premises 'outdoor advertising sign,' Roanoke's term for a billboard, and subsection (d) sets the spacing standards that make land along I-581 and the Roy L. Webber Expressway (Southwest Expressway) largely off-limits: no new billboard may go up within two hundred fifty feet of the nearest edge of either highway's right-of-way. The same subsection layers on additional exclusion zones that often overlap with freeway frontage: three hundred feet from any residential district boundary, two hundred fifty feet from a school, library, place of worship, museum, or park, three hundred fifty feet from another billboard on the same side of the street, six hundred sixty feet from the Blue Ridge Parkway right-of-way, and five hundred feet from where an arterial or collector street crosses the city limits.

Beyond spacing, subsection (c) caps outdoor advertising sign height at twenty-five feet and limits any sign structure to two faces set no more than forty-five degrees apart. 1 outdoor advertising standards for any sign within six hundred sixty feet of the highway's right-of-way. An applicant must submit a survey demonstrating compliance with all spacing standards as part of a basic development plan, and under subsection (f) the Zoning Administrator cannot issue the local zoning permit until the Commonwealth's outdoor advertising agent has granted tentative approval of the same sign.