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But the building at 128 Street and 115th Avenue was full of asbestos. Removing it was slow and expensive. It didn’t help that investors had legal problems of their own.

In May 2010, Dub assured me the asbestos was almost gone and would all removed by the end of that year.

“We’re going to go ahead like gangbusters,” he told me then.

In November 2013, Dub assured me asbestos removal was “three-quarters done.” He was going to apply for a development permit in a few weeks, he told me, and start construction in the summer of 2014.

Now, three years later, Dub is swearing he’ll start construction as soon as he gets a report declaring that all the asbestos is out.

Call me skeptical. The residents of Inglewood and Westmount have heard that many times before and so have I.

Dub must take much of the responsibility for this. Yes, he’s the creative genius who resurrected the Alberta Hotel and designed the striking new Hyatt Place in the Quarters. And he has, after all, cleaned up what amounts to a federal toxic waste site. But he grossly underestimated how great a challenge the asbestos mitigation of the Camsell site would be. He and Inglewood have paid a high price for his mistake.

But this “development” is far from unique. All across the city, there are construction projects, large and small, that have stalled or been stranded by developers who don’t have the financing, the experience, or the wherewithal to finish the deal. Sometimes that’s one infill house that sits, half-built, for months and years, frustrating neighbours. Other times, it’s theskeleton of a highrise or a giant hole in the ground, or a site half built. The city has all kinds of bylaw tools to micromanage homeowners who have weeds in their backyards or who don’t shovel their walks. But when it comes to giant eyesores like unfinished or torpid developments? There are virtually no levers.