Backed Up at Dundas West and Bloor Street
Seven years ago, Mediacom operated three roof signs at 1540 Bloor Street West, at the north-west corner of Bloor West and Dundas West. You can see Mediacom’s three signs in this photograph, published on Transit Toronto. Two of Mediacom’s signs were 10′x20′ and one was a 14′x48′.
Then Pattison Outdoor stole the lease from Mediacom. In early 2000, Sid Catalano of Pattison Outdoor obtained this variance to replace Mediacom’s three signs with one back-to-back 10′x40′ roof sign. The permitted sign allowed two east/west 10′x40′ faces with an internal angle of sixty five degrees. A permit was then obtained pursuant to that variance and Pattison built the signs legally. This photo of the construction at Dundas West, from Transit Toronto, shows the legal Pattison roof signs:
Later, Pattison illegally backed-up the sign with a 10′x40′ north face:
This is how the signs by-law defines “Area of Sign:”
If a sign has a tri-vision panel or if a sign has two (2) surfaces or sign boards which are back-to-back or which form an interior angle of not more than sixty-five degrees (65°), the area of one (1) sign face, whichever is larger
The City planner who wrote that definition left the City to become the Director of Legislation for Pattison Outdoor. An equilateral triangle has an internal angle of sixty degrees. The sixty-five degrees allow easy illegal back-ups for triple-faced signs where the two legal faces max-out the maximum permitted area of sign. If the by-law’s maximum internal angle was fifty five degrees, Pattison would not have been able to back up this sign without major changes to the structure, and such a change would have made all the faces illegal, not just the back-up.
This time, we’re not going to let Sid Catalano write the by-law.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:02 am
But if Pattison doesn’t make loads of money from us, how will he hang on to the Guinness Book of Records which he just bought?
February 20th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
That building will be toast in a year or two.