For locally owned and operated Pet's Barn, president Dean Travis said the ordinance could ruin him.

"I don't even think I can compete with competitors that I have out there," said Travis.

Travis said Las Cruces has a similar sign ordinance.

"If I had to do it over again, I would not put the store in Las Cruces, and if they continue with this ordinance, I doubt I'll do any more stores here," said Travis.

If the ordinance went into effect when they were building the famous Plaza theater, the signage in front would be breaking the law in two different ways.

First, the Plaza sign would be too big. Under the new ordinance, signs must be no more than 20 percent of the size of the wall. Plus, you can't have two signs on one wall.

For Pet's Barn, that means their signature logo has got to go.

"I couldn't have either one of those if I want to put my Pet's Barn image on the front of the building," said Travis.

After much debate, the council decided to let walls have multiple signage, and let signs be at 40 percent of the size of the wall. City Rep. Susie Byrd championed the new ordinance, and said the changes are acceptable.

"I hear from constituents all the time about, they really want commercial corridors that are more attractive, more interesting. I just think that this sort of visual clutter with all the signs everywhere has not served our community," said Byrd.

The new ordinance is only for new signage. The ordinance goes into effect on Oct. 1, unless council decides to push it back a month to Nov. 1.

Recommendations To New Ordinance

1. The council did away with wall sign restrictions. Thus, a business can have multiple signs on a single wall.

2. Monument signs would adhere to the existing sign ordinance. Therefore, no change. Pole Signs would adhere to the guidelines of the proposed sign ordinance.

3. Kept existing ordinance in dealing with wall signs and modified it to say wall signs must be 40 percent of the wall elevation.

4. Signs now can protrude a maximum of 3 feet from the roof line.

5. Temporary Real Estate Signs: -C-1 through C-4 should be treated equally and allow 32 square feet of signage and maximum height of 10 feet per sign. -One sign minimum per street frontage with additional signs every 50 feet. (no maximum)

6. Deleted section 20.18130D2 on p. 272 of new ordinance, which will be reviewed by staff.

7. Staff to review recommendation to look at Phoenix regulation to create a design review board.

Some information courtesy of the City of El Paso.