Thursday, February 26th, 2009 ::: Leases

Titan Outdoor’s lease with 254 Adelaide Street West is on shaky ground, to say the least.

Ironically, the property owner is objecting to the painting of a legal mural on the wall, and he claims that Titan is only permitted to hang a fascia sign on his wall. Titan is currently suing the owner of the property in court to force the owner to stop violently interfering with what Titan says is its rights, under its lease, to paint a legal mural sign. In other words, this lawsuit has our name written all over it.

We previously covered Titan’s sign at Audit: 254 Adelaide Street West, where we noted that on January 12, 2006, MLS incorrectly determined that Titan’s illegal vinyl fascia sign was legal by relying upon a mural permit that only allowed a painted sign. Eventually MLS issued this Notice of Violation against the sign in July 2006, and according to this document, charges were laid on April 13, 2007.

The property changed hands, and the new property owner objected to Titan painting a sign on his wall with this e-mail dated October 14, 2008:

Titan Outdoor responded with this e-mail dated October 15, 2008, wherein Titan offers the property owner an insane $120,000/year to allow a painted sign:

Why such a ridiculously generous offer? Because Titan Outdoor was in a bind. See, in that e-mail dated October 15, 2008, Titan is negotiating a lease with the property owner for the period November 1, 2008, to October 31, 2009. Problem is, Titan had sold space to Apple for this site before it had secured that lease from the property owner. Here is Titan’s agreement with Apple, dated September 23, 2008, which calls for Titan to receive $195,968 for a “mural” for the 52 weeks starting December 29, 2008:

The property owner responded with this e-mail, also dated October 15, 2008, rejecting Titan’s ridiculously generous offer of $120,000/year.

When Titan Outdoor claimed that $120,000 was “far in excess of what you have been earning on the site,” it wasn’t joking. Although it is doubtful that another ad firm can maximize the value of this wall more than Titan can, some people are just never satisfied and just don’t want their wall mucked up with paint.

By November, Titan had to paint the Apple sign (a pretty detailed creative for a painted sign, see photo above) or piss off a major client; so Titan sent its sign painters to the site in early November, notwithstanding Titan’s inability to satisfy the recalcitrant property owner. The property owner’s subsequent violent and disturbing actions on November 11, 2008, are alleged in this page of Titan’s factum:

This is where it gets interesting.

The thing is that Titan could have operated an illegal vinyl fascia sign for Apple on this site and not been harassed by MLS or the property owner who didn’t want a painted sign for $120,000/year, because the City has stated in court that it is choosing not to remove Titan Outdoor’s fascia signs on mural permits until Titan’s court challenge is resolved. This is an excerpt from an MLS affadavit in the recently decided Strategic Media motion:

Furthermore, this contract between Apple and Titan indicates that Titan received $183,300 to operate Apple’s illegal fascia sign (”banner”) at 254 Adelaide West during 2008, $12,668 less than the fee for the painted mural, which cost $21,000 to paint:

What happened here is that although Titan could have continued to operate an illegal fascia sign for Apple Computer (the undisputed highest bidder for this wall, and a client you don’t want to piss off), the actions of IllegalSigns.ca, and the subsequent media coverage, caused Apple Computer to require Titan Outdoor and Pattison, through its global advertising agency OMD, to operate only legal signs for Apple’s ads in Toronto. See, on March 16, 2007, the Toronto Star published this article containing a photograph of the co-ordinator of IllegalSigns.ca in front of an illegal iPod ad. The article states:

He points out an iPod ad on a wall on King St. east of Spadina Ave. “It’s too big, too high and too close to that Calvin Klein billboard, which is legal. These vinyl signs can’t be within 60 metres of each other. This is 10 times larger than it’s supposed to be. It’s about 300 square metres. The maximum by law is 25 square metres. Apple probably has no idea these signs are illegal. They buy what the advertising agency is selling them.”

That photograph was subsequently used in several other Toronto Star articles, as well as this article in Eye Weekly.

All the Apple iPod ads in Toronto are now perfectly legal, at very great expense to Titan Outdoor, especially if another billboard company takes advantage of this violent and disturbing situation and acquires the lease to 254 Adelaide Street West (the property owner’s phone numbers are 416-899-9698 and 416-922-9990 and his fax number is 416-922-5559).

Titan, at the explicit request of OMD, also ceased operating this illegal iPod sign on the south wall of 126 John Street.

The first lesson here is ironic, and it is the first lesson that we were taught as activists: the media is powerful, more powerful at times than Municipal Licensing and Standards and the City Solicitor. Activists need to recognize that and use it to their advantage.

The second lesson is that breaking the law doesn’t make you powerful. It makes you weak.