How do you reignite an urban experiment that has been successful beyond the wildest dreams of the people who planned it? That’s the challenge facing Granville Island, which has less than 18 months left to plan its largest reinvention since the early 1980s.

At the end of 2017 the island’s largest tenant, Emily Carr University, will decamp, taking with it more than 1,800 students who have both enlivened the island and provided a steady source of part-time workers for the community’s more than 275 small businesses.

It will also be vacating a fifth of the island’s rentable space — 194,900 square feet of space.

That’s in addition to a 4,500-square-foot building next to Performance Works that’s been empty since October and, come the end of this year, the Arts Club Theatre will move its 198-seat Revue Stage to West 1st Avenue, freeing up enough space in the Public Market to result in a serious revamp there.

All of this presents a huge opportunity fraught with risk.

Granville Island is Vancouver’s biggest tourist draw, attracting more than 10 million people annually. It was one of the first indoor urban farmers’ markets in Canada. And, it is a cultural hub where artists, artisans and creative folk have been trained, nurtured and appreciated.

“There is a lot of good there,” says Joel Berman, whose glass arts studio outgrew Granville Island and late last year moved to Annacis Island. “But maybe it’s time to look to great instead of just good.”

That’s the opportunity. Done right, it will re-establish Granville Island as a place so innovative and interesting that even a few decades later planners from other cities will still be trying to emulate it.

The risk is that the island’s managers and planners aren’t up to the task. But Jessica Schauteet, vice-president of the Granville Island Business and Community Association, is optimistic.

After nearly a year of uncertainty over which federal government agency would manage the island, that’s been settled and “the community did a collective exhale,” Schauteet said. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. will carry on. Further bolstering the business community’s confidence was the appointment of Janet Flowers in February as general manager. She’s been doing the job for a couple of years as the acting manager.

For her part, Flowers acknowledges, “We have a tremendous opportunity to do something remarkable.”

She wants to retain the quirky mixture of industrial, marine, cultural and market uses.

But how? The consultant’s report on repurposing the Emily Carr space got a lukewarm response when it was released last year, despite its consultations with “key informants.”

Aimed at attracting younger people, the proposal doesn’t seem to fit with what’s already there nor does it include anything really new — a live music venue, as well as space for “micro- and nano-breweries” and a “commissary” (a shared kitchen for start-up companies).

Sebastian Lippa started work two weeks ago as CMHC’s project manager to fine-tune the plan by CitySpaces Consulting, the company where he worked up until now.

Consulting with the island community is Lippa’s No. 1 priority because, Flowers says, the community has “a huge vested interest.”