Monday, April 14th, 2008 ::: On The Road

We just got back from Scenic America’s symposium on illegal billboards in Jacksonville, Florida, which is a beautiful and well-maintained city. The meeting was put on by a group called Citizens of a Scenic Florida Inc; “Scenic Florida Inc” itself is a dummy company owned by CBS Outdoor. Meeting billboard activists from across the United States was quite the experience. We’ll have more on that later. Turns out that billboards built on the road allowance are pretty common across the United States. This section of the blog is called On The Road and is dedicated to this phenomenon. We previously looked at IMA Outdoor’s annexation of public property in The StreetLife Kiosk at Spadina and Richmond is on the Road Allowance. Today, we look at 21 Widmer:The online property line map indicates that the IMA kiosk is outside the property line:There is a nice big road allowance on Widmer. In fact about 15 parking spaces on this lot are located on City property. In other words, not only is the StreetLife sign on public property without a permit, the parking lot is charging people to park on public land. Note that the entire (permitted) patio of the Corned Beef House Bar in this photo from VirtualCity.ca is on the same road allowance as the kiosk, which you can see in the background of the VirtualCity.ca photo. In any case, this illegal sign’s days are numbered. A planning application has been filed to build this on the lot.