Bright digital indoor signs fall through bylaw loophole

Some bright signs shining onto Ottawa streets appear to be falling through a regulatory loophole.

The digital signs are being used by some businesses to advertiseeven at night when the stores are closed.

While city bylaws do regulate outdoor digital signs,these particular signs are installed inside store windows.

Just inside The Cash Stream, a pay-day loan company on St. Laurent Boulevard near Donald Street, sits a screen roughly two metres wide by 70 centimetres tall.

Residents across the street said the sign flashes bright white messages, all day and all night, into their apartments.

'It flashes and flashes for nothing,' neighbour says

"It flashes and flashes for nothing, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Troy Wood.

"We had to change our living room drapes because the old ones that we had, it was just coming right through. ... I can understand it during the day during business hours, but at five o'clock, turn it off."

At the company's Bank Street location near Hunt Club Road the digital sign is twice as big, about four metres wide, and flashes messages from the second floor in white and red.

The city does regulate the location, size and brightness of outdoor digital signs, but not indoor ones shining out onto the street, according to Rideau-Vanier Councillor Mathieu Fleury.

He's received complaints about four business locations and has asked city staff to look into the matter, which may lead to an update of the bylaw.

"The first step is to ask, do we have a hidden policy that would enable us to enforce? If that's not the case, which I anticipate it [isn't], it should trigger a review of policy," he said.

Representatives of The Cash Stream did not respond to a request for an interview.