Raleigh says no to digital billboards, again
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- Raleigh council declined to pursue rules allowing digital billboards citywide.
- City staff and attorney cited legal limits and past votes blocking billboard changes.
- Lamar proposed zones, brightness, spacing and transition limits; council kept rules.
The idea was to reduce the number of billboards in Raleigh and clean up the visual clutter along its streets.
“I was hoping this was a path that we could do that,” City Council member Corey Branch said Tuesday. “Where we can remove maybe eight signs and maybe [have] one new digital [sign]. I think that would do a lot to make our city grow better, but ... we don’t have the authority to do it.”
So the council decided not to pursue new rules the billboard industry was seeking to allow digital billboards in some parts of Raleigh.
Industry members had approached Branch, who said he asked city staff if the council could require older billboards be removed when a new digital sign goes up and was told it doesn’t have that legal authority.
The council could have asked staff on Tuesday to draft new rules anyway. Instead it unanimously decided to keep in place the digital-billboard ban and other rules that have remained mostly the same since the 1980s.
“We received many, many emails and messages on this one,” council member Jane Harrison said. “I don’t have any residents that are asking for this. I only have residents that are concerned.”
This is the second time city leaders have been asked to change the rules to allow digital billboards in the city.
Despite several meetings, the Planning Commission recommended the city take no action on proposed changes in 2023, and the council voted to take no action in June 2024.
This time, Lamar Advertising Co., which owns most of the billboards in the city, submitted a draft proposal that included:
- Adding billboards to downtown mixed use and commercial mixed use zoning areas, and not just industrial areas.
- Prohibiting a new digital billboard within a mile of another digital billboard and within 1,000 feet of static billboards.
- Limiting the brightness to 7,500 nits in the daytime and 1,000 nits at night. Nits is how brightness is measured.
- Allowing a 2- second maximum transition, but no animation, scrolling, streaming, flashing or special effects.
The proposed ordinance specifically listed these streets as places where the billboards are meant to be seen from: Interstate 40, Interstate 540, Interstate 440, US 1, US 401, US 70, US 64, I 87, NC 50, Hillsborough Street, Wilmington Street and Atlantic Avenue.
“I think that the city attorney’s interpretation of our limitations, because of General Assembly actions, made this very difficult to move forward with that interpretation,” said Mayor Janet Cowell. “So we will be meeting with industry [representatives] later this week just to talk about that.”
This story was originally published October 21, 2025 at 7:16 PM.
