HOUSTON -- Imagine you didn’t live in Houston and you were here for a day. That’s Kent Porter’s situation.

He’s here on a nine-hour layover between flights.

So he took a bus downtown, and he’s confounded by the fact that there aren’t many signs.

It’s something we have gotten used to.

"Walked this way, now we’re going that way, we’re just trying to find some food,” said Porter. “Found Starbucks twice, that’s about it,” he said.

Enter the newest challenge to Houston’s sign ordinance.

It is called “The Pavilions”, an enormous shopping complex unlike anything downtown has ever seen.

Developers want the city council to let them hang huge neon signs, blinking lights, even a video wall like the one outside the Hobby Center. It’s all to boldly broadcast what’s going on inside.

Bob Eury is with Houston Downtown.

“The one thing we’ve known for years we lack in downtown is shopping. So this pavilions project is very strategically important for us going forward,” he said.

Developers call it a beacon.

The problem is that downtown is known as a scenic district. That means neon signs are not allowed.

Opponents say that if the city allows the signs, soon other developers will want them for their projects too.

“And therefore they all get to write their own sign code and the sign code doesn’t mean anything,” said Olga Mora with Scenic Houston.

“Well, it would help. Like I said, we don’t even know where to go,” said Porter.

Kent Porter doesn’t care about scenery. He just wants a sandwich before his flight home.

Depending on how this debate goes, the city may soon have some signs a tourist could see from the sky.

This will be up for a vote during Wednesday’s Houston City Council meeting, but there’s word that it will likely be delayed for two weeks.

If it passes, the developers would have just four months to get those signs up before the Pavilions opens in October.