The landscape changed in a big way for South Delta when the new malls opened their doors at the Tsawwassen First Nation in 2016 - but it’s not the first time there was talk of regional shopping centres opening here.
Back in 1974, Royal Oak Holdings of Vancouver, which was responsible for developing Lougheed Mall in Burnaby, sought support from Delta council to build an $18 million, 440,000-square-foot regional shopping complex accompanied by a $3-million, 150-room hotel.
It would have been built on a 40-acre site bounded by Highway 17, 60th Avenue and by 64th Street.
The same company was rejected by council the previous fall for a $15 million regional shopping centre at the former Paterson Park racetrack site in Ladner.
In 1973, Leon Dirassar, vice-president of Royal Oak Holdings Ltd, said the Paterson Park mall would have had two major department stores, a junior department store, a Safeway supermarket and other smaller stores.
He insisted a regional shopping centre was needed by Delta residents and that such a mall “would in no way be harmful to the town of Ladner.”
A petition with hundreds of names in favour of the Paterson Park shopping mall plan was given to council
He added prospective tenants “have been pressing us and there are many who want to do business in Delta.”
A report by the firm Gordon Soules Marketing and Research, commissioned by council, had recommended against the Paterson Park plan on the basis that it would have “a permanent detrimental impact on the economic viability of shops in Ladner and Tsawwassen,” adding, “No new retail outlets would locate in either Ladner or Tsawwassen and many of the existing stores would likely close.”
The Soules report, though, recommended that if the Paterson Park proposal was defeated “that the municipality encourage the development of new retail shopping facilities and the modernization and expansion of existing businesses in Downtown Ladner.”
After that 1973 proposal was shot down, talk of South Delta getting a mall heated up again when Delta elected a new mayor in Tom Goode along with his new slate of alderman, all having reportedly a friendlier stand toward shopping centres.
In early 1974, council approved a motion by Ald. Lorne Hope instructing the planning department to carry out a study with the view to select “one or two sites in the South Delta-Ladner area” for a major shopping complex.
Around the same time, Dawson Land Company had been pitching its $3 million Harbour Market development for downtown Ladner.
That plan was called off in protest by the company over council considering the new Royal Oak proposal.
The 1974 proposal would have seen a new mall built near the Delta Town & Country Motor Inn
New Democrat MLA Carl Liden would threw cold water on the mall pitch, however, saying “it was the wildest kind of dream” it would receive government approval.
He cited several reasons including the complex being located on farmland within the new Agricultural Land Reserve.
The idea of a big shopping centre in South Delta was still alive in 1976 with Royal Oak Holdings still in the picture, as well as council giving “serious consideration” to purchasing Paterson Park from the Delta Agricultural Society.
It would have been a complex land swap that would have paved the way for a shopping centre at the park, which was not in the ALR.
The society would get land elsewhere to be able to build and start up a new harness track again.
Mayor Tom Goode was interested in the idea of a regional shopping centre to South Delta
Paterson Park was home to a harness track for decades before ceasing operations just a few years earlier.
However, at the time, the Delta Optimist reported that several DAS members expressed doubts the park was a suitable site for a major regional shopping centre, but Goode was not so pessimistic.
As far as concerns from local merchants, Goode noted businesses in other communities “had been assisted by the introduction of a major regional shopping centre.”
The civic politicians eventually shot down that later mall plan, Ald. Earnie Burnett saying Delta wasn’t prepared to see highrise or commercial development at the park.
The park remains vacant to this day.
