It’s been a long road for a major redevelopment application for the Tsawwassen Town Centre Mall to finally be submitted to the City of Delta.
To be discussed at council’s next regular meeting on Monday, Dec. 2, a report outlines the Century Group Lands Corporation application to replace the outdated single-storey mall.
The proposal includes four mixed-use residential buildings up to 24-storeys in height situated on separate podiums. The low-rise residential buildings and podiums would be between five-and-six storeys.
It would have 1,433 residential units, including a mix of strata, market and non-market rentals, as well as commercial space including a 31,000-square-foot grocery store.
As a community contribution, the owner is proposing to provide a new Community Hub, consisting of a library and mobility hub space along 56th Street, the report notes, adding the proposed library would spill-out onto a publicly accessible central plaza to the west, creating an outdoor gathering space for the community.
The owner is also proposing that 20 per cent of the total residential units to be rental units, secured under a Comprehensive Development Zone, while five percent of the total residential units would be provided as below-market rental housing.
Approved this year, Delta’s new Official Community Plan (OCP) eyes most of the high-density growth in designated town centres and major corridors. Those areas are also viewed as areas for potential bonus density to create an even greater number of rental and below-market housing.
In late 2023, after starting a community consultation asking residents for their ideas on the future of the town centre, Century’s Sean Hodgins unveiled a proposed concept at a public information session at the mall.
That concept included, among other amenities, 50,000-square-feet of streetscape retail, a 30,000-square-foot grocery store, a new 12,000-square-foot library and accessible public open space.
The proposal would have seen several six-storey buildings as well as four taller buildings that would be 23, 21, 19 and 17 storeys in height.
The development would have had 1,250 residential units. The housing would have included market and non-market housing, as well as rentals and inclusive housing for those with disabilities, but details still needed to be finalized before a formal development application was submitted to the city.
Noting services, retail and gathering spaces for events will be important in transforming what is now an underutilized space into a vibrant town core, Hodgins told the Optimist at the event that the feedback was mostly positive.
People were generally more receptive to higher density housing forms, which are in short supply, but there was also some resistance to any significant change, he said.
“It’s generally quite positive, but there’s definitely negative reaction, and when I ask if they don’t want 20 storeys what do they want, the answer is four storeys. So, there’s never really a right answer in terms of being able to do the kind of housing that we need to do,” said Hodgins.
In 2019, Hodgins presented another proposed master plan concept at an open house at the mall, showing a mixed-use urban village, but a formal application was not submitted.
That proposal included 700 condo units in eight low- to medium-rise buildings as well as a new library at the heart of the development, an amenity that would be given to the city which currently doesn’t own the Tsawwassen Library building.
The idea was to have one five-storey and four six-storey structures as well as a 12, 14 and a 16-storey condo building. The concept was aimed at transforming the site to a walkable scale, mixed-use urban village where people can shop, live and gather socially.
Two years earlier, in 2017, city council had asked Hodgins to come back with a proposed overall master plan for the site after he held an information session on a proposed first phase of redevelopment.
Most residents at the public information meeting, as well as letters to city hall, had less than flattering comments about Century’s proposed “Block A” mixed-use building.
The proposed six-storey building fronting 56th Street, which included 11,733 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor and 79 rental apartments above, got a rough ride from an aesthetic point of view with residents describing it as everything from a hospital to a dormitory to a Soviet-style apartment block.
In 2015, Hodgins unveiled his initial vision for a new "green heart" for Tsawwassen. That concept was also to change the four-hectare (10-acre) site from a suburban mall to a vibrant mixed-use neighbourhood.
The vision included several four-to six-storey structures with retail at ground level and condos above, as well as a 12-to-20-storey concrete residential tower. In total, there were to be about 500 condos.
The site would have been linked by a series of pathways and gathering plazas, a park and central fountain, while parking would have been primarily underground.
The Delta-commissioned South Delta Business Sustainability Strategy report that year had a series of recommendations including the municipality allowing high-rise development in the town centre.
A few years earlier, during consultations on a new Tsawwassen Area Plan in 2010, when asked by a committee why the mall wasn’t up for redevelopment, Hodgins answered it would have to financially make sense, but it wasn’t with the current limits. Losing good tenants for up to three years for a project that may not be as profitable provides little incentive for property owners, he explained.
It was the same answer given by other property owners.
Some of the potential policy changes outlined in an “Ideas” document by the Tsawwassen Area Plan Committee at that time included reconsidering height and density regulations, extending the geographic area of the town centre northwards to encompass more of 56th Street, considering new land use designations to support new forms of businesses and supporting more higher density residential development within the town centre as well as adjacent transition areas.
The majority of respondents to a municipal mail-out survey had indicated opposition to six-storeys in the town centre.
The proposed area plan was abandoned during a public hearing but in early 2011 council had given approval to a modified plan that only offered modest growth. That new plan included increasing the maximum height in the town centre from four to six storeys but only in a confined area. It kept the 1992 overall town centre area growth cap at 1,000 units, which at the time meant there was only additional capacity of 242 units allowed.
Now that a formal application has been submitted in 2024, the city says it will be hosting three public information meetings in the first quarter of 2025 to introduce the application and receive feedback.
