Legal action between the owner of Tsawwassen Springs and the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALC) remains unresolved as an application is back on the books to build more townhouses at the site.
In 2019, the Tsawwassen Golf and Country Club filed a petition, under the Judicial Review Procedure Act, against the commission in B.C. Supreme Court over the commission’s denial a year earlier of an application for an Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) exclusion for a site immediately west of the current development.
In an update last week to the Optimist, the ALC said the judicial review hasn’t been cancelled, but it hasn’t been heard yet, either.
“The petitioner put evidence before the ALC that the presence of random sub-soil fill on the property, the small size of the property, its proximity to residential developments, its isolation from agricultural lands, and its poor access are all reasons why the property is unsuitable for both soil-bound and non-soil-bound farming,” the petition stated when it was filed.
Following a public hearing in 2017, Delta council granted preliminary approval for an application to build another 60 townhouses, a tennis court and other amenities at the 2.55-hectare (6.3-acre) site, which is in the ALR, but was not actively farmed.
The luxury townhouse plan would have seen the three-bedroom, three-bathroom units built in 15 buildings.
The site was owned by another individual when the original Tsawwassen Springs housing application was put forward more than a decade prior, but the owner wasn’t interested in selling at that time. The property was later sold.
The development plan for the site included splitting a property on Springs Boulevard into two lots, one of which would have had the townhouses, while the other would have been consolidated with the golf course.
The lot with the new homes would be excluded from the ALR, while the other lot would have received non-farm use status, both requiring ALC approval.
The requests were referred to the ALC in July 2017, but in May of 2018, the commission only approved the non-farm use application, denying the ALR exclusion.
Council at the time granted an extension of the city’s preliminary approval to keep the application active while an application was made to the ALC for a reconsideration, which was also denied.
The City of Delta recently notified the public that an updated application has been made to build additional 60 townhouses and that application is associated with an “existing application.”
The city has begun gathering feedback on the application for an ALR exclusion to remove a portion of the property from the farm reserve.
The application will require another OCP amendment as well as ALC and Metro Vancouver approvals.
