Street Study: The Avenue Road Protected Area
In today’s Street Study we take a look at Avenue Road, north of Davenport Road, south of Mc Master Ave.
This particular section of Avenue Road is subject to a restrictive provision of the signs by-law, passed in 1995, that prohibited all third-party signs. Three illegal third party signs have been erected in this area. We have succeeded in removing two of them.
First, here is what the by-law says:
The map in question is this.
And here are the three billboards that illegally encroached into the protected area:
148 Avenue Road - CBS Fascia on a Murad Permit
There was a painted sign on this location for years.
Murad Communications obtained a permit to paint a non-illuminated billboard at this site before such painted signs were permitted but during a time when non-conforming signs were allowed to be replaced. Murad argued that it was replacing a non-conforming, pre-existing, non-illuminated painted sign and was granted the permit. That permit was probably improperly issued because we couldn’t find a permit for the pre-existing painted sign. In any case, it would probably be a moot point and next to impossible to get that permit revoked today.
We do know that CBS is currently operating an illegal fascia sign at this location, that it is illegally illuminated and that reverting back to a painted sign would probably require a new permit due to changes in the by-law and non-conforming signs jurisprudence. Who knows, if we suddenly get un-busy, and Buildings allows CBS to paint a sign, and if they can make a profit doing so, we’ll write a request for a revocation of the Murad permit.
185 Avenue Road - Titan Fascia on a 1st Party Mural Permit
Feb 13, 2007:
March 9, 2007:
We don’t expect Titan to re-erect at this location, notice that they removed the structure and their nameplate.
Titan couldn’t obtain third party mural permit so it was operating this under a 1st party permit. We filed a complaint with inspector Shankar who, back in the fall, left us the following voice mail which we wrote down word for word: “Hello Rami this is Inspector Shankar regarding the sign at 185 Avenue Road. I had a discussion with Titan, the company who did the sign, his name is David Mackie, he knows you very well, anyway, I mean, they are never going to bring it down, but we have a deviation order.” David knew us very well even before IllegalSigns.ca went live. Poor Titan, we picked on them first.
223 Avenue Road - Abcon Fascia on an illegal fence
Abcon has removed this illegal sign pursuant to our complaint, but the illegal structure (which is more like an illegal fence) remains as do the offending lights. We expect a re-erection.
There is a legal Astral Info-Must-Go pillar in the Macphearson parkette. Other than that, this streatch of Avenue Road is pretty clear of billboards.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Our group has been fighting illegal signs for over 10 years, and after amalgamation it was very very difficult - too few inspectors who didn’t know or care about the sign bylaws. So, for any peripheral help we get from organizations such as yours, we are grateful.