Royal Farms

All of the Royal Farms stores in Baltimore County have erected extra illegal signage - usually advertising tobacco products. In almost every case, there is a zoning hearing that was held, usually for some variance or a Special Exception for a gas station at the location. The result of each hearing includes an approved site plan, which includes information about the signage. As can be seen below, in each case, Royal Farms then comes back and adds signage beyond what was approved. It is doubtful that they even got a permit for any of these.

See here about the issues with tobacco advertising.

Initial complaint letter filed June 20, 2017.

The following is an ongoing record of attempts to get CE to take action against all of these Royal Farms stores. When this effort is well under-way and I see that it has the County's support (as a part of their well-publicized efforts to reduce smoking levels, especially among youth), complaints will be filed against other similar violators. If the County does not take these complaints seriously, I will go to the press, this being one of numerous pieces of evidence that the County is all talk and little action when it come to reducing tobacco use.

Note that much of the information below regarding inspections is taken from the county's Accela database, so a statement of "no action" means that nothing was recorded, as it should have been. It is possible that actions such as verbal warnings were taken, but it is the inspector's fault that proper records are not made so that we, as citizens, can see that they are doing something.

After many signs went up at all Royal Farms stores in the area, I filed this single complaint on Feb 3, 2021 to cover all in one action. Apparently, someone else filed a complaint against a bunch of them about the same time since CE issued a whole batch of citations, including against many that I had not listed. They each came with a proposed fine of $4,000 up to $13,000, totaling $65,000 and, of course, were issued against the property owner, which is usually not Two Farms. Anyway, they seem to have gotten the message, as all the signs disappeared and, as of 4 months later, have not reappeared (at least in my part of the county). All the cases were closed. (As usual, no details are available to citizens on the "Citizen's Access" website.)

* cases filed by someone else.