April 13, 1989. That was the date of the first issue of South Delta Today - six months short of a quarter century ago.
Back around that time I had been looking to start a community newspaper in South Delta. We had offered to buy the Optimist, but the owners at that time were not interested in selling. (Although in a couple of years, they changed their minds and the two papers were merged in 1991.) Since the Now Newspaper Group had community newspapers in Surrey/North Delta and Richmond, we felt South Delta would be a nice addition to the group. Since we couldn't acquire the existing product, we decided to do a start-up.
I rushed the start-up since public hearings on the Southlands (back then, the Spetifore farm) were due to begin and I thought they might run for a couple of weeks. Since the proposed development was such a hot issue, getting the paper on the street for the hearings would give us immediate readership.
I needn't have hurried. That set of public hearings ran into July if I recall correctly and set the record for the longest public hearings in Canadian history. The then management of the Optimist grew tired of the debate and stopped covering the hearings - leaving the field wide open for our little start-up to build readership on the public hearings coverage.
In due course, the council of the day turned down the development proposal. After the dust settled, locally-owned Century Holdings acquired the property and put any plans for development on the back burner for a couple of decades.
This coming Monday, Century's latest proposal goes to public hearing at the South Delta Recreation Centre on 56th Street with hearings also scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday from 3 until 9:30 p.m. Delta council members will certainly be earning their keep next week. However, three days of hearings seems optimistic based upon previous experience.
But perhaps they have it right. The Century proposal is substantially different from the proposal put forward in 1989. There is nowhere near the vocal and emotional opposition that there was to the 1989 Tsawwassen Development Ltd. proposal and supporters of the Century proposal are certainly more numerous and visible.
The diminished opposition is probably due to several factors, with the prime one being the proposal itself. The development application now on the table is vastly different from the TDL proposal of 1989. The plan is not to develop the whole site, but rather to develop about 20 per cent of the property adjacent to the west side of the community of Boundary Bay. The balance of the property of about 425 acres will be transferred to the municipality.
Also a whole new generation has hit adulthood since the last set of hearings. They are facing the high cost of real estate in the Lower Mainland and the lack affordable housing for new families. Any increase in supply is a boon to them - and their parents recognize the fact.
No doubt there will many speakers in opposition, but I don't think my reporters will have to log anywhere the number of late nights that my crew did in '89.
