Could the writing be off the wall for some of the country’s largest outdoor advertising companies? Major outdoor firms including CBS Outdoor, Pattison Outdoor and Astral Media Outdoor, along with smaller outfits such as Abcon Media and StreetLife, are coming under furious attack from a Toronto activist group called IllegalSigns.ca.
The group is urging the city to curb an industry whose “culture of non-compliance with the law is pervasive” by ordering the removal of what it says are nearly 2,000 illegal billboards (more than half of the city’s ad faces). “There’s a massive proliferation of illegal signs in Toronto,” says the group’s co-ordinator, Rami Tabello. He claims the city is second only to Philadelphia in the amount of illegal signage.
The group’s primary weapon is a Google-powered city map providing pictures and a description of every Toronto billboard or outdoor advertising structure it says is illegal. However, one outdoor vendor says the map contains “a hell of a lot of stuff that’s not accurate.”
Since its Feb. 12 debut with an attention-getting press release entitled “Toronto orders 200 illegal billboards removed” (a claim one city official dismisses as “premature”), Illegal Signs has been ardently tracking signage activity in the city. On its regularly updated website, the group conducts “Street Studies” highlighting illegal signs in certain districts, while declaring war on the likes of 3-D signs. Its Feb. 20 entry gleefully reported on the destruction of a downtown building bearing “Toronto’s largest illegal billboard” to make way for a new development.
Jim Laughlin, Toronto’s deputy chief building officer, says Illegal Signs has so far submitted a list of 225 signs it claims are in violation of the city’s sign bylaw. The building department has reviewed 87 of those signs, 57 of which have what Laughlin describes as “issues.” In those cases, the city has sent out notices of violation that give the owner 14 days to bring the sign into compliance or have it removed by the city. “To say that we’ve ordered 200 signs down is premature,” says Laughlin. “We haven’t got that far at all.”
However, Laughlin stresses the building department takes Illegal Signs’ complaints very seriously and is “taking appropriate action to bring this under control. I don’t expect that all 225 will be found to be problems, but we’ll have to review them and verify.”
Abcon Media president Les Abro says his company has removed 16 signs over the past nine months. “We’ve received some violation notices and we’re dealing with it,” says Abro. “The city’s pretty fair and we’re playing ball.”
Abro says the main problem is that many sign permits issued by Toronto are for hand-painted murals, which have been rendered virtually obsolete with the advent of technology that enables companies to print large-format ads on vinyl. Abcon and Strategic Outdoor are members of the Outdoor Task Force, a group which has been working with the city to update the sign bylaw, last revised in 1994. “(The bylaw) hasn’t kept up with the new technology, the new materials and whatever else has gone on in the sign industry. In every city in the world, large or small, there are banners. They’ve em-braced the new technology and Toronto hasn’t.”
Abro cites a recent interview Tabello gave the CBC in which he also stated the main problem is that the city’s sign bylaw hasn’t been updated in over a decade. Since there seems to be some common ground, is there any chance the two parties could work together to reach an agreement?
“With him? You must be joking,” says Abro.
