One of the most common permitting delays we see isn’t about the city at all — it’s a tenant who designed a sign before checking whether the property has a Master Sign Program (MSP), and then has to start over. An MSP is a document, approved by both the landlord and the city, that sets the rules for every sign at a multi-tenant property: allowed sign types, maximum size and letter height, placement on the building, acceptable colors and materials, and sometimes illumination type. Once it’s in place, individual tenant sign permits get reviewed against it instead of against the base zoning code from scratch.

Why landlords want one in the first place

Without an MSP, every new tenant’s sign application goes through a full discretionary review, and nothing stops one tenant from installing something that clashes with the center’s brand or crowds out everyone else’s visibility. A good MSP protects sightlines and consistency across the property, which matters to the landlord’s other tenants as much as it does to the city. It’s also usually faster for everyone once it exists, because city planning staff can check a tenant’s sign against a pre-approved program instead of evaluating it as a one-off.

Where tenants get tripped up

The most common mistake is a tenant (or their sign company) designing a logo-accurate cabinet or channel letter set before pulling the center’s MSP, only to find their preferred size, color, or sign type isn’t allowed. At that point, the options are a redesign, a time-consuming variance request, or both — and either one can push back a store opening by weeks. The fix is simple: before any sign design work starts at a multi-tenant property, ask the landlord or property manager for the MSP, or have your sign company pull it from the city on your behalf.

We request the MSP as a first step on every retail center project, precisely because it’s so much cheaper to design around it than to redesign because of it.

Opening a location in a shopping center or mixed-use property? Let’s pull the Master Sign Program before you design anything.