Council approves permanent Bridge View Bingo

Sault Ste. Marie City Council has decided to grant Bridge View Bingo a permanent license and to allow it to keep its signs.

Appearing before Council last night on behalf of the charity fund-raising bingo near the International Bridge, Bridge View's lawyer Frank Sarlo said there will never be flashing lights on the signs for the bingo.

Ward 6 Councillor Frank Manzo said some of his constituents were worried that flashing lights on the signs, especially the ones seen from the bridge, would be distracting.

"Frankly, the Studio 10 sign is a lot more distracting than any amount of lights would be on the Bridge View signs," commented Ward 5 Councillor Frank Fata. "When I came across the bridge today I made it a point to check out the bingo signs and found them to be quite acceptable."

The Joint International Bridge Authority (JIBA) had a problem with the signs facing the bridge and recommended against allowing them to remain.

Signs on two sides of Bridge View Bingo were erected contrary to a City bylaw forbidding billboards within 300 feet of the bridge and Bridge View came before Council last night asking for a special amendment to that bylaw.

"We are opposed to any amendment that would alter the existing signing ordinance that would allow billboards within 300 feet of the bridge," the bridge's general manager, Phillip Becker, said in a letter to City Council.

Becker expressed concern that council would be setting a precedent with this amendment, that the area would become cluttered and distracting, and that drivers and workers on the bridge would be endangered as a result.

Sarlo told councillors that the bingo was prepared to remove the signs if it deemed them a distraction.

Council chose to grant approval for all four signs on the building, disregarding recommendations from City staff and the bridge authority.

Bridge View Bingo moved to its present site at the old St. Mary's School location at 455 Albert Street West after council approved a one-year relocation for the charity bingo site.

More than $600,000 was spent on renovations to the building and the lands on which it sits, and councillors voted to grant Bridge View Bingo permanent status at its location on Albert Street.