{"id":858,"date":"2006-06-08T19:31:39","date_gmt":"2006-06-08T23:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=858"},"modified":"2013-01-21T12:57:05","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T17:57:05","slug":"the-billboard-battalion-vs-dundas-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/06\/08\/the-billboard-battalion-vs-dundas-square\/","title":{"rendered":"The Billboard Battalion vs. Dundas Square"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/images\/Metropolis-small.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Nearly every community council meeting taking place at City Hall these days attracts someone from the Billboard Battalion, a sub-group of the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) that&#8217;s out to fight the growing number of new billboards that are cropping up around our city. The job of these TPSCers is to comb the community council agendas looking for companies who are applying for a variance &#8212; permission to break a bylaw so they can erect a sign that&#8217;s bigger, for example, than the city permits. When they find them (and there&#8217;s usually a bunch of variance applications made at every community council meeting), they attend the meetings to protest the proposed signs.<\/p>\n<p>They say you can&#8217;t fight city hall, but in this case, the Billboard Battalion actually often convinces councillors not to approve such variences. For more information about the campaign and how to get involved, click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicspace.ca\/battalion.htm\"> here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I received an email from BB organizer Alison Gorbould today that described an application the Toronto and East York community council will vote on at their meeting Tuesday, June 13. It may be of interest to Spacing wire readers:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In February, the release of an image of what the Metropolis complex being built at Yonge and Dundas will look like was met with disbelief.<\/p>\n<p>Councillor Kyle Rae ( councillor_rae@toronto.ca or 416-392-7903) smugly responded that the sign variances were approved in 1998 and 2000 &#8212; and that if people didn&#8217;t like it, they should have said so then. Case closed.<\/p>\n<p>Well, well, well. It seems that Penex Metropolis Ltd. has decided it wants to change its plans.They want to take advantage of &#8220;advances in technology&#8221; and increase the number of signs. And they need permission from community council this Tuesday (agenda item 54). You can read the agenda <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toronto.ca\/legdocs\/2006\/agendas\/committees\/te\/te060613\/it054.pdf\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Staff has recommended agreeing to these changes. They argue that the new plan is similar to the old one and even decreases the overall signage very slightly. But in fact it increases the number of signs (and hence the overwhelming clutter) significantly. And &#8220;advances in technology&#8221;? That can only mean more video screens, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Rae is telling everyone that this is great because the total signage is less. He doesn&#8217;t mention that he&#8217;s talking about a change from 2050.61 square metres to 2020.60.<\/p>\n<p>Whoop-de-doo.<\/p>\n<p>The pictures below show the proposed plans so you can compare. We may not be able to stop it, but we can try to stop it from getting worse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/images\/dundassq-proposed-yonge.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/images\/dundassq-proposed-dundas.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly every community council meeting taking place at City Hall these days attracts someone from the Billboard Battalion, a sub-group of the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) that&#8217;s out to fight the growing number of new billboards that are cropping up around our city. The job of these TPSCers is to comb the community council<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/06\/08\/the-billboard-battalion-vs-dundas-square\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;The Billboard Battalion vs. Dundas Square&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4003,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21759,2],"tags":[1524,11,2482,2484,408,1277,2483,2485,22085,19,435,2486],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-politics","tag-416-392-7903","tag-ad-creep","tag-alison-gorbould","tag-billboard-battalion","tag-councillor","tag-kyle-rae","tag-metropolis-complex","tag-penex-metropolis-ltd","tag-politics","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-public-space-committee","tag-variance-applications"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Billboard Battalion vs. Dundas Square - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/06\/08\/the-billboard-battalion-vs-dundas-square\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Billboard Battalion vs. Dundas Square - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nearly every community council meeting taking place at City Hall these days attracts someone from the Billboard Battalion, a sub-group of the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) that&#8217;s out to fight the growing number of new billboards that are cropping up around our city. 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