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Douglas Todd: In South Delta, at least, you can fight city hall — and stop highrises

“You vote yes for towers, we vote no to you,” read one sign held up by residents of Tsawwassen before a highrise proposal was rejected by council. Last week, the mayor, seeking reelection this fall, said, 'We believe in gentle, community-led growth.'

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After Mark Schoeffel drove into downtown Vancouver last week for an appointment, he said, “You couldn’t get me home quick enough.”

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Vancouver’s tightly squeezed highrises overwhelmed him. He became eager to return to his suburban home in Tsawwassen, “Where you don’t see any towers.”

Douglas Todd: In South Delta, at least, you can fight city hall — and stop highrises Back to video

For the time being, that’s the way Schoeffel and a dogged band of citizens are keeping their quiet beachside community of Tsawwassen, 25 kilometres south of Vancouver. It’s home to about 20,000 people.

In a feat almost unheard of in recent years in Metro Vancouver, Schoeffel, Bev Yaworski  and other citizens of South Delta, which has a tradition of neighbourhood activism, teamed up last year to defeat a developer’s effort to bring four condo towers to Tsawwassen Town Centre mall.

Century Group, a long-time landowner, had been pressing council to give the green light to four highrises, between 17 and 21 storeys, at the mall complex in Tsawwassen, a low-rise suburban community that is on a peninsula adjacent to the U.S. border.  

But last spring, Schoeffel and his many collaborators — using a range of tactics — got Century Group’s four-tower project stopped. When Century came back in the fall with a different proposal for three towers, they halted that too.  

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The Century Group’s website says Delta council’s rejection “sets a terrible precedent for the province.” Yet Schoeffel wonders why the developer has not shown any interest in some citizens’ idea of an alternative: Six-storey condo buildings.

The tower defeat is a rare story in Metro Vancouver and B.C.

The NDP provincial government has been for three years pushing various legislative strategies to force mayors and councillors to set high housing supply targets and drastically densify their towns and cities. That includes forcing them to produce new, upzoned official community plans.

Last week, Delta Mayor George Harvie seemed to get voters’ message. When he announced on April 15 that he is going to run for a third term, Harvie admitted council would have to rethink the NDP-mandated official community plan. Delta’s 2024 plan focuses on accelerating housing developments and simplifying land-use regulations, including by permitting multiplexes on virtually any single lot and promoting towers in Tsawwassen and North Delta.

“We believe in gentle, community-led growth. People need to know what to expect in their neighbourhoods, and we need to do a better job of creating an official community plan that better reflects this, because the feedback we have received about the first one is that it isn’t meeting the mark,” Harvie said.

That is not something often heard from politicians in Metro Vancouver. Most municipalities forge ahead with drastic upzoning. The City of Vancouver, for instance, has been busily approving hundreds of new rental and condo towers, and last month pushed through a new official development plan that severely reduces public consultation.

Given this is a civic election year, could the events in Delta be a sign things to come? After all, mayors and councillors throughout Metro Vancouver, and across B.C., will be facing the electorate on Oct. 17.

Schoeffel, who keeps in contact with citizens groups across the province, couldn’t think of many other tower projects in Metro Vancouver that have been recently stopped or suspended — except the 25-storey Barclay Street hotel proposed for close to Stanley Park in Vancouver.

One other isolated example in Vancouver came in March when council temporarily halted a cluster of rental towers of up to 39 storeys, on East Hastings in Strathcona. Beyond such decisions, Vancouver has been among the most aggressive tower approvers in Canada.

When Schoeffel was asked if he thought fear of an angry electorate was one of the reasons Delta council vetoed towers for Tsawwassen Town Centre, he said there is little doubt.

Indeed, one of the placards that citizens’ groups, including Dream Delta and Delta Voters for Responsible Development, have been waving on street corners was a direct warning to the mayor and council: “You vote yes for towers, we vote no to you.”

The groups also posted signs reading, “Growth? Yes. Towers in Tsawwassen? No.” They sent out thousands of flyers, held rallies, became a big presence on social media, started three petitions, and launched an email campaign targeting the mayor and council.

Schoeffel said a few Tsawwassen drivers gave them “the middle finger” when they held their sign on street corners. And the Delta citizens’ groups also faced criticism from housing advocates including Russil Wvong, a Vancouver-based housing advocate and member of the “YIMBY” (Yes In My Back Yard) community who often encourages his followers to support tower projects.

While the residents of South Delta prevailed in stopping towers in Tsawwassen, the same cannot be said for tower opponents in North Delta, who are bracing for a spate of new highrises.

The expansive municipality of Delta is divided into two parts. South Delta is a flat, agricultural and residential community that includes Tsawwassen and the village of Ladner. In contrast, North Delta is a hillside bedroom suburb that borders fast-growing Surrey.

North Delta includes the riding of former NDP housing minister Ravi Kahlon, who ushered in the province’s upzoning legislation and forced housing targets on municipalities. North Delta is about to get many new towers, especially along busy Scott Road.

While long-time North Delta homeowner Richard Hoover is glad that Tsawwassen and Ladner residents have been able to keep out highrises, he regrets they’re coming instead to North Delta, despite many “raucous” meetings opposing them.

“I believe that North Delta, with a population of about 60,000, has been designated by city council as the area that can be sacrificed in order to preserve the character of Tsawwassen and Ladner… and meet Ravi Kahlon’s housing target orders,” said Hoover.

While sympathetic to the people of North Delta, South Delta’s Bev Yaworski said politicians don’t need to be going to such density extremes in their ostensible battle to combat housing affordability.

“The Tsawwassen Town Centre proposal was rejected because it was an example of density on steroids, and totally out-of-scale for our Delta community,” Yaworski said, emphasizing she and her fellow activists are open to compromise.

Schoeffel acknowledged, if pressed, he would have accepted new condo buildings in the eight- to 10-storey range for Tsawwassen Town Centre — like those around the Arbutus shopping centre in Vancouver’s west side Quilchena neighbourhood, which he finds attractive and to scale.

Regardless, the citizens of South Delta have so far prevailed against towers. And on occasion so have residents of other neighbourhood with a tradition of activism, such as those in Vancouver’s Kitsilano, Strathcona, Chinatown, West End and Grandview-Woodlands.

Tsawwassen’s saga is a reminder that sometimes, even in B.C., you can fight city hall.

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