Friday, October 19th, 2007 ::: Back-Ups
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1018 St. Clair is another illegal back-up courtesy of Nick Arakgi’s CBS Outdoor:

This is on the north side of St. Clair. A single sided sign facing east was altered into a double-sided sign facing east and west. The westerly face does not appear in the permit diagrams. But we know this is a back-up without looking at the permit. How do we know this is a backup? There are a number a clues.

This is a CR zone, and roof signs have not been permitted in CR zones since 1997. Now CBS is an old bureaucratic company. They number their posterboards sequentially. CBS’s latest posterboards are in the low 6000 range, and the boards they built in late 1970s and early 1970s are in the low 2000s. Take a look at CBS’s numbering for these billboards. The old easterly face is billboard #2128:

And the westerly face is #6084:

That’s the first clue that the westerly face was built recently and certainly after roof signs were prohibited in CR zones.

The second clue comes from the Google satellite map:

On that map you can see three billboards. The roof of 1018 St. Clair is the roof sign on the left. The roof sign in the middle is CBS’s single-sided billboard #2127 and the roof sign on the right is a Pattison 12′X16. The satellite map indicates that when the photo was taken, the sign at 1018 St. Clair was a single-sided sign.

We get another clue from VirtualCity.ca which produced this photo of St. Clair:

Here we see all three signs visible in the satellite map. 1018 St. Clair is the billboard on the farthest left. It appears to be single-sided only with no evidence of the legs of the westerly face.

Meanwhile, across the street at 1293 St Clair, also in a CR zone, CBS Outdoor built this somewhat V shaped 10′X20′ roof sign in July without any permit:

This is not a back-up. Previously at this location was a dilapidated first party sign, a photo of which we can’t locate. But the old first party sign was significantly smaller than CBS’s 10′X20′. According to Google, the old first party roof sign was 14′ across, not 20′ like CBS’s sign:

But we don’t have to rely upon Google to tell if the sign was altered. CBS’ billboard number is in the low 6000s:

So we know it was built recently.

Titan Outdoor is picking up abandoned mural leases including at 165 Avenue Road, which abandoned by Astral. Meanwhile Titan Outdoor purchased a signifigant number of illegal billboards operated by CBS in Ireland, a purchase which mirrors Titan’s purchase of a chunk of CBS’s mural permit inventory.