New signs on Aylmer Road

Bulletin Team

The acquisition of CST Brands (food company) by Couche-Tard will soon become evident at 209 Aylmer Road. A few months ago, the new business manager submitted a request for minor variances to the City to replace the signs of Transit Café and Dépanneur du Coin with a permanent sign.

The request is necessary because the business is located in the heritage sector of Old Aylmer and businesses are required to follow the Architectural Implementation and Integration Plan (AIIP). The sector runs from the Marina along rue Principale and Aylmer Road up to Foley Road.

It may appear odd that this sector, namely between Wilfrid-Lavigne Boulevard and Foley Road, would be considered a heritage area when one looks at the businesses signs that are up.

The provincial government maintains that a municipality can “put in place financial incentives to install quality signs to encourage the replacement of inappropriate signs by signs that are more adapted to the size of the buildings and the overall desired ‘cachet’.”

Therefore, when reading the minor variances analysis, we realize that certain norms regarding signs have been ignored in the past.

For example, one of the requests aims to increase the size of the detached signs from 2 m² to 7.4 m², three times the size permitted. And it is of no surprise that the urban committee (Comité consultatif d’urbanisme) recommended it since 2011 and that the municipal council had approved a minor variance authorizing detached signs to be increased from 2 m² to 6.46 m². The recent request only asks for an increase in size that is less than 1 m².

In addition, we learned that in 2011, the officials had omitted the inclusion of the area reserved for the price of gas in calculating the total area of detached signs and had also omitted to authorize a translucent lighting mode when the analysis was done.
(Trans.: CB)