Planning commission recommends council consider Fite Circle digital billboard overlay amid neighborhood objections

The Rancho Cordova Planning Commission voted to recommend that the City Council certify the initial study and mitigated negative declaration and approve a zoning text amendment, conditional use permit and minor design review that would allow a digital billboard at 3127 Fite Circle.

The recommendation, made at the planning commission’s public hearing on item 7.1, would add a new digital-freeway-sign overlay area to the city code and clear the way for a digital sign up to 1,200 square feet and 60 feet tall with operating rules to be set in a city council-approved operating agreement. The commission’s recommendation will go to the City Council for final action.

The matter matters to residents because the proposed sign would be sited along U.S. Highway 50 about 85 feet from the Caltrans right-of-way and roughly 300 feet from homes across the freeway; nearby residents and a competing outdoor-advertising firm urged commissioners to reject the requested deviations from the city’s existing sign rules.

Nick Sosa, a planner in the city’s Planning Department, told the commission the proposal is a relocation of a second digital sign previously approved for the Cordova Community Council’s mineshaft property in 2023. He said the project parcel is a 2.2-acre office/industrial property within the Folsom Boulevard specific plan area and that the application includes a zoning text amendment to add the new overlay area, a conditional use permit to operate the sign, a minor design review for site modifications and an…