Sunday, May 10th, 2009 ::: Non-Conforming

The law won’t stop CBS Outdoor’s Stephen McGregor from putting up illegal billboards.

These are CBS’s billboards at Victoria Park, 220 metres south of the Danforth, on CNR railway property:

What happened here is that CBS Outdoor entirely removed two existing legal non-conforming 10′x20′ sign structures and replaced them with two entirely new structures.

This is not decades-old construction:

The previous two signs at this location had two legs each; the new signs have one leg each. Because the pouring of concrete requires the issuance of a building permit pursuant to the Ontario Building Code, CBS Outdoor’s new signs are illegal, as the Buildings Department does not issue permits for work on non-conforming signs in the Former City of Toronto.

We know these signs originally had two legs each because satellite photographs taken in 2003, when the signs were non-conforming on account of 60-metre separation-of-signs requirements, show two legs each. Look carefully, and you can see the shadows from each leg:

The original legal signs at this location go way back, and there are tons of historical photos in the City’s records that show two legs on these signs.

Building a case against these signs, and the hundreds just like them across the City, is just the kind of thing that the City’s new Sign Unit will spend the billboard industry’s money on once the billboard tax becomes law.