CITY OF KATY, Texas (Covering Katy News) — American Furniture Warehouse wants to bring the large digital signs it uses at its other Houston-area stores to its Katy location, but doing so would require the city to change a sign ordinance that has been in place since 2008. And Katy city leaders aren't convinced they want to do that.
The issue is particularly important to American Furniture Warehouse because the company says its Katy store is underperforming its other locations.
“Our Katy store does dramatically underperform compared to all of our other 17 locations,” Jacob Colby, the company's Houston-based regional manager, told City Council during a Wednesday workshop.
Colby said the company has considered other factors, including that the Katy store does not directly face the freeway. But one difference the company can clearly identify is its signage. Its other stores have the digital signs the company wants to use in Katy.
“Do I think a digital sign's gonna make up the complete difference to our other locations? No, I think we have some other challenges,” Colby said.
But, he added, “we do know it'll help.”
The debate brought City Council together for a workshop at City Hall, where council members weighed the furniture retailer's request against concerns that changing the rules could open the door to more digital signs at businesses, schools and churches across Katy.
No decisions were made.
American Furniture Warehouse requests ordinance change
Colby described the existing sign in front of the Katy store, 500 Pin Oak Road, as “essentially a billboard.”
The company wants to use digital technology on the sign, as it does at its other Houston-area stores in Webster and Conroe.
Katy's ordinance does not completely ban electronic signs, but its restrictions effectively prevent American Furniture Warehouse from operating the type of rapidly changing digital sign it uses elsewhere.
Ian Clowes, the city's community development director, said changeable electronic signs can be permitted in certain commercial and industrial districts outside the Old Katy district and at least 500 feet from single-family residential zoning.
But there is a catch: The message generally must remain static for at least four hours. If it changes more frequently, it falls under the city's prohibited “spectacular sign” rules.
Clowes said the four-hour requirement is essentially a nonstarter for most companies because businesses using digital signs typically want to change their messages much more frequently.
The restrictions date to 2008, when Katy amended its sign ordinance to address electronic signs. Katy High School, 6331 Highway Blvd., and First Baptist Church Katy, 600 Pin Oak Road, had digital signs before the restrictions were adopted and are considered grandfathered.
Colby said American Furniture Warehouse isn't asking Katy to “open it up for everything everywhere.”
“We know it does help our business,” Colby said. “I don’t think there should be no LED at all or open it up for everybody, no restrictions. I think there could be some parameters that we all come together, we discuss and we set.”
Sherrell Rogers
Council members consider whether there's a middle ground
Ward B Council Member and Mayor Pro Tem Gina Hicks and Council Member-at-Large Paul Follis called for the workshop.
Hicks said American Furniture Warehouse has raised the issue for about two years, but the discussion has expanded beyond the retailer as schools, businesses and the Katy Area Chamber of Commerce have expressed interest in the city's rules.
“We need to be transparent,” Hicks said. “We need to invite the public into this conversation, and I was actually very surprised of how many emails, calls, comments that we got on the other side as well, from the Chamber of Commerce, the email that they sent today, stating that they think it should be allowed in certain areas of the city.”
Hicks said she does not want Katy to lose its small-town appeal but believes there may be room for compromise.
“I feel that there is a way that we can thoughtfully look at this and balance that small-town charm and see where it would be appropriate to have reasonable standards,” Hicks said.
Hicks suggested one possibility could be shortening the four-hour requirement in areas where electronic signs already can be permitted rather than broadly allowing rapidly changing signs throughout Katy.
But what began as a request from one furniture retailer quickly raised a much larger question for the council: If Katy changes the rules, who else should be allowed to put up digital signs?
Sherrel Rogers
Katy City Council Member Gina Hicks at the Sept. 23, 2026 Katy City Council special meeting.
Schools make their case for digital marquees
The workshop revealed that American Furniture Warehouse isn't alone in wanting Katy to loosen its restrictions.
Parents associated with Katy ISD schools inside the city said the ordinance prevents their campuses from using the digital marquees common at schools elsewhere in the district.
Lindsey Brown, who said she has served on the Robertson Elementary PTA board for three years, described manually changing the school's marquee as one of the least desirable volunteer jobs on campus.
“I would rather be inside the Rocky Bulldog costume at August outside in the carpool line than do the marquee,” Brown said.
Brown said she contacted 62 Katy ISD campuses and found that 51 had digital marquees. Schools within Katy's city limits generally cannot install them under the city's current restrictions.
She argued that digital signs would make it easier for schools to communicate events and deadlines to parents.
Ward A Council Member Paula Taylor, who teaches at Katy High School, wasn't convinced that digital signs are necessarily more effective.
Taylor said she passes Katy High School's grandfathered digital sign regularly but rarely remembers what is displayed on it.
“It becomes background noise, just like so much of the other information that's out there,” Taylor said. “You ignore it. You drive past it.”
Changing the rules creates a legal question
Allowing digital signs for schools while continuing to prohibit them for other property owners may not be as simple as creating an exception.
During the workshop, the city's attorney cautioned council members that sign regulations must be written using neutral standards and raised constitutional concerns about allowing one type of institution to have a digital sign while denying another property owner the same opportunity.
“I would not recommend allowing just schools or just churches,” the attorney said.
Instead, she said any new rules could potentially be based on neutral characteristics such as zoning, road frontage or particular corridors rather than deciding which organizations should be allowed to have electronic signs.
The discussion also raised the possibility that the city's sign ordinance needs a broader legal review. The city attorney said she had not reviewed the ordinance line by line since about 2009 and noted that more recent court decisions have affected how cities can regulate signs.
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The digital sign in front of First Baptist Church of Katy.
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The digital marquee sign in front of Katy High School.
Katy more restrictive than many cities examined
City staff also compared Katy's rules with those in other Texas communities.
Clowes said most of the cities staff examined allowed electronic signs with restrictions. Coppell, Friendswood and Fulshear allowed them on a more limited basis. Only a small number of the communities examined prohibited them as broadly as Katy.
That leaves council members with a larger policy decision than whether to accommodate one furniture store: whether Katy's nearly two-decade-old approach to digital signs still fits the city today.
Mayor Thiele favors keeping current restrictions
Mayor Dusty Thiele said he was concerned when initially approached about the workshop because the discussion appeared focused on American Furniture Warehouse. As the debate expanded to schools and churches, he said, his concerns grew.
“Since we started getting emails the last couple of days and then even up here, these signs are now expanded to schools, it’s now expanded to churches,” Thiele said. “I don’t know how many schools and churches we have in the City of Katy, but I don’t believe we could just limit it to public schools. I believe once we start opening it up to schools, you start having private schools coming to request it.”
Thiele said the ordinance might need some language cleaned up but argued that previous city leaders adopted the restrictions for a reason.
“We don't have to be the same as every other city out there,” Thiele said. “We can be Katy, and that's what I'm concerned about.”
His preference was to leave the basic restrictions in place.
“We just need to abide by our current ordinance, I believe,” Thiele said.
American Furniture Warehouse hopes discussion continues
Colby said he hopes the city continues looking for a compromise.
“I don’t think this is all or nothing,” Colby said. “I think there could and should be middle ground.”
Colby acknowledged that deciding what that compromise should look like ultimately belongs to the community.
“This is also from my experience, we have these everywhere else in three other states, but what does a good middle ground look like?” Colby said. “I think that's what our goal is. I don’t want Mason Road, either, or Las Vegas, but what does that look like?”