Unlicensed sign left hanging for a while

The Baltimore Sun

THE PROBLEM -- A billboard advertising apartments in the Mid-Town Belvedere area does not have a permit, according to city officials, but getting it taken down has proven difficult.

THE BACKSTORY -- Darrell Bishop of Mount Vernon doesn't have a lot of confidence in the bureaucracy of city government.

"I never expect anything to happen on the first go-around," he told Watchdog. "If you have low expectations and they are never met, the first time they are met it gives you a whole different outlook."

So imagine how elated he was May 17 when he got this e-mail from Brigitte Fessenden, a planner with Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, about a billboard advertising apartments attached to the side of 1230 St. Paul St.

Subject: RE: Mt. Vernon Bill Board

To: Darrell Bishop

Thanks Darrell - we will tell the owner to take it off, since there is no permit in place.

Now imagine Bishop walking down St. Paul Street in mid-July and still seeing the billboard.

Fessenden said that months ago she notified the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, which enforces the rules, to issue a citation. "I'm a bit surprised it wasn't taken care of," she told Watchdog last week.

The Housing Authority's Julie Day, an attorney in the code-enforcement section, said Wednesday that the agency had not received the complaint but that the inquiry from Watchdog prompted a visit by inspectors. Yesterday, she said the billboard on St. Paul Street, and several others in surrounding neighborhoods, are being removed, and should all be down by Friday .

"My plan is to hold off any enforcement action until that is confirmed," Day said.

WHO CAN FIX THIS -- Donald Small, zoning administrator, 410-396-4128.

UPDATE

The south clock face of the Bromo Seltzer Tower still shows the wrong time. Three sides, apparently broken when dirt got into the machinery during a renovation project, have been fixed.

But the fourth clock face has been more problematic.

It was set to be fixed by July 13, but the repairman quit, said Tracy Baskerville, spokeswoman for the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, which is turning the tower into artists' studios. The next repairman was to have fixed it by Friday but got too busy, she said.

"We hear there are clock folks in Maine," Baskerville said yesterday. Not just any repairman will do. The clock is a No. 10 clock built in 1910 by the Seth Thomas Clock Co.

"We are now in need of a clock expert," the spokeswoman said.

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