Our office is in Burr Ridge, which means our local market is one of the most fragmented permitting environments in the country. Cook, DuPage, Will, Lake and Kane counties hold hundreds of separate municipalities, each writing and administering its own sign code.
A channel letter set approved in one village can be over the allowance in the next one along the same road. Oak Brook will ask about setbacks. Hinsdale will ask about illumination. Orland Park will ask about appearance. None of them are wrong, and none of them are the same.
The rollout lesson
Teams planning a ten state program often ask for one design that works everywhere. The honest answer is that the design can be consistent, but the package cannot be — and the sites that will hold up the schedule are identifiable in week one if somebody reads the ordinances first.
Send the site list. We come back with a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction read on review paths, timelines and fees, so the slow addresses get started first instead of last.