The paving and landscaping shown in the renderings is not what will get built, anyway, so it would be an error to tie the removal of the screen to the removal of the swirls (which were a bit silly, but not nearly as silly as filling up a piazza with strips of grass as proposed in the new rendering). Yonge's sidewalks are all being designed in a similar, cohesive way - not that the emerging granite 'key' scheme is necessarily the most attractive and functional sidewalk design, but, whatever, that's what's being done, not whatever gets rendered here.
Hate to break it to you guys, but this project is definitely worse off without the media screen. Others have noted the large retail & office component of Hullmark, and, given existing and future pedestrian patterns, this piazza will be quite devoid of people unless as much attention as possible is paid to luring people (and their eyes, and their wallets) out of their way to the space. The intersection is not Yorkville...it will never be intimate. Yonge & Sheppard was supposed to be a rather subdued (well, obtuse, 80s-style) corporate nexus, but that didn't pan out. Don't let the parking lots and empty sites fool you or establish the area's aesthetic norm: flashing lights and signs and ads are the future...or should be, once the sites are developed. The NW corner, for instance, is slated to be developed with a small retail complex. Yonge & Dundas and Times Square aren't the ideal models - busy Asian shopping/restaurant streets are. The video screen is a logical next step in the area's evolution, not some superfluous eyesore. The curved blank wall above the piazza now looks stupid and barren. Perhaps it's time for North York to finally stop pretending the 80s aren't over.
Video screens are sometimes like lipstick on a pig. It needs to be said that there'd be more art in the videos and ads on the screen than there is in the design/architecture of the complex upon which the screen would be mounted. Hullmark without a video screen is like Babe without the ability to talk...no matter how charming they both might still seem without their added feature, if you slice them up, you'll still find bacon.