Board grants 18‑month exception for Bottoms Bridge Tire sign after debate over overlay precedent
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Sign Up Free
Summary
The board approved an 18‑month exception allowing Bottoms Bridge Tire and Auto Care to retain a reinstalled freestanding sign enlarged to about 85 sq ft, with the company agreeing to consider design or operational changes to return to compliance.
The New Kent County Board of Supervisors on Nov. 12 voted to grant an 18‑month exception to allow a freestanding monument sign at 3025 Pocahontas Trail to remain with an expanded area of roughly 85 square feet, after the sign was reinstalled with a pole‑mounted LED reader board following storm damage.
Planning staff told the board the Commerce Corridor overlay district limits freestanding signs to 50 square feet and the property’s previous legal nonconforming sign was 64 square feet. In early 2025 a storm damaged the sign and the owner reinstalled it with a new LED reader board that increased total area to about 85 square feet, triggering the exception request and an unfavorable Planning Commission recommendation.
Applicant Jacob Yost described his business as a local employer and said the reader board improves safety and access for motorists because the building is set back from Route 60. "Our goal has always been to operate in a way that's professional, responsible, and rooted in community engagement," Yost told the board, adding he is open to landscaping, a brick base or dawn‑to‑dusk lighting conditions to mitigate visual impact.
Board members discussed precedent for the overlay district and whether allowing the exception would invite similar requests along Route 60; several supervisors said they had received resident contacts both for and against the request. Chair and other supervisors explored conditional options such as limiting the digital display to dawn‑to‑dusk hours, requiring landscaping, or giving the applicant time to return the sign to an earlier permitted area.
Ultimately the board adopted Resolution R‑36‑25 to approve the exception for an 18‑month period; the exception will lapse if the sign is not brought into compliance or conditions are not met by the deadline.