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

York County's sign ordinance generally limits a shopping center to one free-standing sign per street frontage, capped at 150 square feet, with a 200-square-foot ceiling on cumulative free-standing signage for the whole center under Sec. 24.1-703(b)(4). But Sec. 24.1-703(b)(4)f. carves out a special allowance for the largest developments: a regional shopping center with more than 350,000 square feet of tenant space, sitting on a parcel with at least 1,500 feet of frontage on an Interstate System highway, and with direct access to a Primary System highway that intersects that interstate, can install one freestanding monument-style sign along its interstate frontage and a second one along the intersecting Primary System frontage.

Each of those two signs can run up to 600 square feet in area and 45 feet in height, subject to compliance with Section 33.2-1217 of the Code of Virginia, which governs signs visible from the interstate system. Those interstate-frontage signs are explicitly exempted from the sign area and height limits that would otherwise apply under the county's Tourist Corridor Management (TCM) overlay regulations at Sec. 24.1-375, and they don't count against or reduce the signage the center is otherwise entitled to along its other public street frontages.

In short, this is a narrow exception built for a handful of the county's largest big-box or mall-anchored centers along the interstate corridor, not a general freeway-signage right available to smaller commercial uses.