At 83 Bloor Street West, CBS Outdoor has Built Illegal 10′x20’s
CBS Outdoor has the oldest billboard inventory in the City of Toronto. Many of CBS’ signs that were built in the 1950s and 1960s by its predecessor companies EL Ruddy and Mediacom are a non-standard format and were illegally converted into standard 10′x20′ signs. We previously looked at one of these illegal conversions in At 25 Burnside Drive Historic Aerial Photos Disprove CBS Outdoor’s Affidavit.
We just found another one. At Bloor and Bay streets, CBS Outdoor built these illegal 10′x20’s:
On May 28, 1956, EL Ruddy obtained a permit (#38732) to build a roof sign on this roof. The approved diagram for the sign is no longer in the City’s archives; the archives only contain a copy of the permit application. The permit application simply indicates that the height of the building is 41 feet. There is no other sign permits issued to this property except for a permit for a ground sign at the rear of the property (permit 2189).
CBS Outdoor has claimed in the past that the current signs were in place since 1956 pursuant to the permit 38732. We have obtained a photograph of the building from the Toronto Archives, taken in January 1975, which indicates that the sign which existed on the roof of the building in 1975 is inconsistent with the 10′x20’s that are there today:
The copyright of that photograph belongs to the photographer Peter Sramek who donated the print to the Toronto Archives. Sramek was exploring the issue of gender stereotyping.
CBS Outdoor was unable to obtain a permit for the 10′x20′ work because of the height of the building.
