1163 St Clair West
1163 St Clair Avenue West is located on the south-east corner of St. Clair West and Dufferin:
In its meeting of May 21, 22 and 23 2002, City Council granted a temporary 1 year variance to build this sign. City Council attached the following conditions to the variance [PDF]:
(a) a building permit being obtained for the temporary sign within three months of approval by City Council;
(b) the temporary sign being installed substantially in accordance with the application plans on file with the Building Division, South District, within three months of the building permit issuance;
(c) the owner of the property providing an undertaking satisfactory to the Director of Community Planning, South District, to remove the temporary sign by the date falling one year after the date the building permit for the sign is issued; and
(d) the owner of the property providing a letter of credit or other form of security satisfactory to the Director of Community Planning, South District, to secure the undertaking in Part (c) above;
The building permit for the sign was issued on August 28, 2002. On this basis the sign did not comply with condition (a) which required the sign to obtain a permit within three months of May 23, 2002. Deputy Chief Building Official Edward Tipping ignored condition (a) when issuing the sign permit five days after the expiry of the variance approval.
On the basis of the sign permit being issued on August 28, 2002, it was required to be removed on August 28, 2003 by way of condition (c). The sign is still there and was inspected by Tipping’s building inspector long after August 28, 2003. The inspector ignored the requirement to remove the sign and cleared the permit without deficiencies.
Pursuant to condition (d), City Council is supposed to have a letter of credit that it can rely upon if the sign is still there after August 28, 2003. In fact, all City Council can safely rely upon is Ted Tipping’s misprision.
