Audit: 335 King Street West
During the first half of 2006 Toronto and East York Community Council directed Municipal Licensing and Standards to take action against illegal third party wall signs. In response, MLS investigated most wall signs in downtown and declared them legal because they didn’t know what they were doing.
Today we look at 335 King Street West. In November 2006, the illegal vinyl fascia sign was advertising Motorola:
Sadly, at 335 King Street West, MLS’s Danny Baird declared Astral’s illegal fascia sign legal, twice.
On February 23, 2006, he received the investigation file for this sign from a previous officer, Anthony Bartolo, and then wrote in his notes that the sign has a permit:
On June 23, 2006, Officer Baird, doing a sweep of signs along King West, attended 335 King Street West once again and took this photo of Astral’s illegal sign, then advertising Copperhead Beer. His notes are a little more detailed this time. He writes that he observed a “fascia sign on west side of building:”
So he found permit 99-015702 in the computer and determined the sign was legal. Here is permit 99-015702:
As you can see, this is a permit for a non-illuminated mural sign not a fascia sign. A mural sign, as regular readers of this site know, must be painted on the wall. Whereas, as fascia sign may be affixed to a wall. Astral Media cannot obtain a fascia permit for this sign, which is located within 60M of another billboards, because of this Separation of Signs line in the signs by-law:
No person shall erect or display or cause to be erected or displayed a fascia, ground, roof, pedestal or illuminated mural sign used for the purposes of third party advertising unless it is separated by a minimum radius of sixty (60) metres from any other such sign used for the purposes of third party advertising.
Hence, the non-illuminated mural permit. It would help if our officers understood the law. But they don’t, neither do their supervisors, nor their supervisors’ political masters. The City of Toronto has one planner who understands the signs by-law.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:55 pm
And they put up a new one tonight and on the adjacent building which was empty just last week. http://flickr.com/photos/dalmond/525839651/
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:27 pm
There is an interesting article in this weeks issue of my community newspaper The Bulletin (www.thebulletin.ca) about how officers from MLS are “waging war” against illegal signs operated by small businesses on Yonge street.
It seems as if they are going after the illegal 1st party vinyl signs that some bsuinesses have installed and physically removing them due to either a lack of a permit or because the sign is illegal.
Not sure if this is true or not but if so then why don’t they “physically remove” some of the larger, illegal signs by Astral, Viacom and other if they are illegal?
They can deputize me if they want, I’ll do it for free…..