Saint Paul, MN Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

Saint Paul generally treats billboards along its interstates as legally nonconforming signs, but Sec. 302(b) carves out a narrow path to modernize them into dynamic-display (digital) billboards. To qualify, the billboard must be located within 330 feet of I-94 or I-35E north of I-94 and be designed to be read from the highway, and it must sit at least one mile, measured along the freeway, from any other billboard with dynamic display designed to be read by drivers heading the same direction. Only one sign face on a given billboard structure may be converted, and the billboard cannot be visible from any residence -- regardless of municipal boundary -- in a residential or TN traditional neighborhood district whose windows face and can directly see the dynamic display, defined precisely by a 1,000-foot, 75-degree "visual field" cone drawn from the sign face.

The owner must obtain a sign permit for the conversion and, as part of that application, agree in writing to permanently remove other existing billboards in the city: six square feet of illuminated billboard face, or eight square feet of non-illuminated face, must come down for every square foot of new dynamic-display space created. Billboards the applicant owns in residential districts, or at locations the city council has designated by resolution for removal, must come down first before removals elsewhere count toward the offset; removed structures must include full demolition of the sign structure and foundation.

Removals occurring between one year before the application and two months after permit issuance count toward the requirement. Outside a B4 or B5 zoning district, this conversion pathway is the only way a freeway-facing billboard becomes a dynamic-display sign in Saint Paul.