After Monday night's Delta council meeting, it looks like Ladner's waterfront is still searching for that long-awaited catalyst.
For years, decades really, Chisholm Street has been looked upon as a bit of an afterthought even though it resides on the edge of Ladner Harbour. There's a pub and a restaurant, as well as a few stores, but most would agree it's falling short of realizing its potential.
So when municipal hall bought a couple of sites along Chisholm, and then embarked on a plan to develop them with a marketplace containing shops, restaurants and more, it signaled change was finally on the horizon.
The concept behind the civic undertaking, which was to be done in conjunction with a private partner, was not only to bring people down to the harbour but also to act as a catalyst for complementary development. It was intended to inject some much-needed vibrancy into a largely forgotten waterfront.
The desire to improve that corridor still exists over at municipal hall, but the deal with Quay Property Management to develop a marketplace has been shelved. That decision, made at a closed-door meeting last week and announced Monday, was disappointing given all the effort expended to conceptualize and then refine those development plans, but it's hard to argue with the notion of walking away from a deal that doesn't make financial sense rather than saddling taxpayers with a white elephant.
So while I don't take issue with Delta bailing on the project, I think it's important that such a move doesn't bring waterfront revitalization efforts to a grinding halt. In the wake of the marketplace decision, Delta is looking at the costs of physical improvements to its own sites and is poised to create financial incentives for potential Chisholm Street developers, but will that be enough to achieve the desired results?
Even though it didn't work out, the marketplace proposal was a bold step by Delta, the kind that likely has to take place again if we're to see any tangible results in the future.
When this whole waterfront redevelopment process began a few years ago, many who've been around Ladner for a while received it with an I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude. They'd watched other attempts to revitalize the area fall by the wayside before they ever amounted to much, so they were understandably guarded this time around.
Something tells me Monday's announcement on the marketplace hasn't done much to change their minds.
