Editor:
Re: Odd place to locate industry, Murphy's Law, July 13
I read your editorial with interest and amusement.
The lands known as Boundary Bay Airport have a variety of uses in addition to being one of Canada's busiest and best small airports.
There is a wildlife management area on airport land on the south and west side, there is other land on the east and west that is in the ALR and is leased for agriculture, and there is land to the north that is the site of the old wireless station.
These lands total more than 150 hectares of airport land not in airport use. The remaining land at Boundary Bay Airport is leased to Alpha Aviation for the operation of the airport.
The land that is subject to the lease with Alpha was defined by Transport Canada in an earlier lease with then-operator Raf Zur and signed in 1983. This lease permitted the airport operator to develop the airport land and the I8 Zone was created to define and limit development to airport related business.
This was the case for 20 years and during that time no significant development or airport improvements occurred.
After Alpha took over the lease in 2004 things began to happen, new hangars were built, a new terminal building was constructed and many other improvements were accomplished.
Alpha entered into an agreement with Heli-One to build a helicopter maintenance facility employing 400. In 2008, the uses in the I8 Zone were amended to include warehousing and distribution along with a short list of other uses on lands not deemed necessary to airside operations.
The land Dayhu (doing business as Ten By Ten, in this case) is building on is not essential to airport operations, has never been in the ALR, is zoned I8 since 1983 and has formed part of the Boundary Bay Airport lands since 1940.
The intention with this development is to build nearly one million square feet of distribution space for port related usage.
This use of land that is appropriately zoned and is readily accessible for this use demonstrates there is no real need to use land in the ALR for port related distribution needs. It makes sense to use the existing inventory of properly zoned land for port needs.
When I drive over the 80th Street overpass and look out over the landscape I see an airport that was carved out of the land in 1940 and languished in poverty from 1983 to 2004, that now provides over 500 jobs for our community (with 1,000 more coming) and is a significant taxpayer and contributor to our economic and social fabric in Delta.
I also see the landscape around the airport is still dominated by agriculture,
the agriculture of 2012.
Coun. Robert Campbell Chair
Boundary Bay Airport Advisory Committee
