Billboard Permit Fraud: 452 Richmond Street West
Welcome back to Billboard Permit Fraud, where we take a look at how outdoor advertising companies in Toronto are filing false information with the Buildings Department in order to obtain permits for billboards that they are not entitled to.
We have some good and bad news on the permit revocation front to report shortly, but first, today, we begin our look at The Games Strategic Media Plays With Permits. Strategic Media has quite a collection of billboard permits that aren’t worth the paper they are written on.
We don’t write much about Strategic Media, only because we don’t need to tilt at windmills. And, there is one thing. See, we owe Strategic Media thanks because we can safely say that if it wasn’t for their illegal sign at 559 College Street, there would be no IllegalSigns.ca today. So thanks for getting the ball rolling you guys. You rock.
Here goes the story of 452 Richmond Street West.
On May 12, 2006, Daniel Pitoscia applied for and obtained this permit to erect a third party fascia sign on the easterly elevation of 452 Richmond Street, the sign advertising Telus:
The signs by-law prohibits third party fascia signs from being within 60M of other third party signs. So why did the buildings department issued the permit when the Telus sign is within 45 Metres of the legal CBS roof sign on the south side of Richmond, advertising ConradC?
To get the permit, Daniel Pitoscia lied, on page two of this document, where he attested that that his proposed fascia sign was not within 60M of a third party roof sign. (The Telus sign is also within 60M of the Aldo sign, but because the Aldo sign is illegal, it does not trigger a separation requirement.)
Section 297-4 E. of the signs by-law states that a permit application for a sign must be accompanied by “A photograph clearly showing the location of the proposed sign and adjacent areas.” The photograph the Pitoscia submitted with his application (left) was conveniently cut off at the point where the CBS roof sign becomes visible. This was enough to fool the zoning examiner into issuing the the permit.
The examiner at this point because handwrote a notation on the bottom of the plan, which instructed the building “inspector to verify” that no roof sign exists within 60M of the proposed sign. Check it out:
Unfortunately, our building inspectors just aren’t doing their job and aren’t following zoning examiners’ instructions.
On August 24, 2006, inspector David Callahan, attended the sign and cleared the permit without checking 60M separation requirements. Here are his notes:
We believe that the buildings department has similarly improperly issued and improperly inspected over 100 billboard permits. Every billboard permit in the City of Toronto needs to be re-inspected.
We expect this permit to be revoked as it was issued on false information. This is amoung the new batch of permit revocation requests we are in the process of filing with Buildings.
