You are adding a second location, or a new tenant just signed, and now you need a sign. The quote in front of you covers that one sign and nothing else. The question worth asking now is what that one sign should share with the next three you buy. Local sign shops can do more for a growing storefront than build the sign you came in for. At Grand Rapids Sign Company, we can map your whole property first, then design the next sign as the first piece of a plan that fits the rest of the property. That property map becomes the reference for the signs you add later.
Start With the Signs Already on Your Building
Before you choose a format, write down every sign already up on the property. Say you run a four-suite strip center: walk it and record each sign, from the shared monument and its tenant panels to the channel letters over the end anchor suite. Note the window graphics and the directional signs in the lot as well. Then map the signs you know are coming, whatever the new location or tenant will need. With both lists in front of you, the real gaps and conflicts stand out, such as a single monument panel for a suite that may soon hold two tenants. A perceived need for a new sign is sometimes met by refacing or relocating a sign you already own, so you can decide whether the next move is a new sign or a change to the signs already up.
The Master Plan Is the Part You Reuse
The inventory is only a snapshot of what stands today. A master sign plan is the set of rules you write once for a whole property and then apply to each sign that follows. It fits a property with several tenants or more than one building, where the same sign questions come up each time you add one. In it you settle the recurring decisions, such as where signs may go and how large each format may run. Where your jurisdiction recognizes an approved master or comprehensive sign plan, that approval can contribute to simpler permitting for later signs that conform to it, because the criteria are resolved in the plan instead of being worked out again for each tenant application. Placement and size settled once in the plan may not need reworking for each later conforming sign, while handling each sign on its own can mean repeating that planning. A sign that departs from the plan, or that needs its own review, does not get the same treatment.
You can reuse the standard for vetting formats as well. UL 48 programs can cover electric formats such as channel letters and changing-message signs, though naming a category does not prove that a particular finished sign is certified. So the plan can require that each electric sign come with evidence tied to the finished product, and that rule then applies to each electric format you add later.
Reserve Room for the Tenant You Do Not Have Yet
Tenants turn over, and suites get split or combined as businesses grow. You can build a master plan for the tenants you do not have yet, not only the ones on the property today. Map the current sign allocations, then define adaptable locations and envelopes within the limits that apply, so usable capacity stays open for turnover or later growth. Go back to that strip center: suppose the anchor leaves and two smaller tenants split the end suite between them. If you already reserved a monument panel that divides and a storefront band sized for one wide sign or two narrower ones, each new tenant can propose a conforming sign from criteria that already exist. Reserved capacity does not lock in later approval, and you still meet the rules in force when the sign goes up.
What to Bring Before You Buy the Next Sign
Come back to that quote on your desk. Before you approve it, you can treat that one sign as the first piece of a plan you extend to the rest of the property. For the first call to be useful, bring two things: a rough inventory of the signs already up, even a phone photo of each, and your lease’s sign-criteria page, the section that says what tenants may install and where. If the lease has no such section yet, that gap is worth naming early, because settling it can reduce the repeated planning later signs would otherwise need. Grand Rapids Sign Company serves Grand Rapids’ growing storefronts from our shop in Walker, and in a sign consultation we can map your property before you commit to the next format. Call us at (616) 284-8739, and we will start with the whole property.
