There's much that separates North Delta from South Delta - and I'm not just referring to that expanse of bog in the middle of our municipality.
Although the communities fall within rather arbitrary municipal boundaries and are thus lumped together as Delta, these siblings don't always have a lot in common. That's evident in many ways, but perhaps one of the best examples of how their sensibilities differ is in the area of building heights.
Earlier this month Delta council approved a 37-storey high-rise near the corner of Scott Road and 80th Avenue in North Delta. That's not a misprint: there's supposed to be a three in front of the seven.
Now, if civic politicians had tried to pull that kind of stunt down here, or a developer had the audacity to propose something of that magnitude, they would have required a police escort to make it out of municipal hall in one piece - assuming, of course, opponents had already been peeled them off the ceiling by then.
It's no secret that people in these parts take building heights seriously. During efforts to revise the Tsawwassen Area Plan a couple of years back, commercial property owners made it abundantly clear that for redevelopment to be cost effective it would need to go up. They told those tasked with updating the document that what had been envisioned two decades earlier wasn't viable without increasing the height of buildings in the town core.
Nothing like the 37 storeys approved in North Delta, but more than the six-storey limit allowed here. The reaction? We're sorry, but that's not going to fly.
In contrast, there are already a couple of 14-storey buildings in North Delta and a proposal was on the books last year to redevelop the North Delta Inn site adjacent to Scottsdale Mall with an 18-storey tower. That application did encounter resistance, but this month's approval of the 80th Avenue high-rise shows opposition in those parts only runs so deep.
Civic politicians are keen to remedy a situation where the Delta side of Scott Road hasn't seen the same level of revitalization as across the yellow line in Surrey, so it stands to reason the height limit was stretched in order to kick-start that process. That same argument, albeit on a much smaller scale, has been used in South Delta, but has found there's no justification for going up.
I guess it's just one more instance where communities might be in the same municipality, but not necessarily on the same wavelength.
