Expectations couldn’t have been higher in Mimico in 2005, when Councillor Mark Grimes jump-started an ambitious effort to unlock the potential of southern Etobicoke’s long-neglected waterfront.

Preliminary meetings with residents, city staff and developers set the stage for what he dubbed “Project 20/20 — A Perfect Vision for our Community.” The lofty goal: To create a blueprint for revitalization that everyone could get behind.

After nearly a decade, the policy framework intended to guide Mimico’s transformation over the next 20 years could soon be in place. Last Tuesday, the Mimico-by-the-lake Secondary Plan passed at Etobicoke York Community Council. It’s expected to go to Toronto city hall for approval in July.

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But around Mimico’s lakeside strip, what was once shared excitement has been replaced by disappointment. From disenchanted developers to residents so fearful of losing their neighbourhood to condo towers that they are petitioning the city to intervene, it seems few are happy with the vision that was supposed to please them all.

When asked about the 20/20 plan, Madeleine Pengelley, who owns Birds and Beans, a coffee shop in the heart of the waterfront, buries her head in her forearm, and sighs.

“It was such a promising process. It was incredible at the beginning,” she said. “I have lost faith in the city — lost faith in the process.”

Reinventing Mimico’s waterfront is a challenging proposition. The plan focuses on a 1.4 km stretch of Lake Shore Blvd. W. that is best known for what locals call “The Great Wall of Mimico” — a row of squat, half-century-old apartment buildings that obscure views of the waterfront, but also contains increasingly rare affordable housing for families.

The comprehensive, block-by-block guidelines approved at community council on Tuesday aim to create “a vibrant, mixed-use neighbourhood” with “exemplary parks and open spaces” and a “thriving retail and commercial main street.”

Where tall buildings are permitted, heights are capped at either 15 or 25 storeys, depending on location, and the plan notes that they should generally be situated in the middle of the block, as far as possible from the street and the lake. There are also provisions for protecting heritage buildings, and replacing existing rental units.

“There are big things that are achieved in this secondary plan that are a little bit overwhelmed by the rhetoric on both sides of the conversation,” said Toronto chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat. “There are a lot of people who participated in this process over a very long period of time who are quite pleased or satisfied or hopeful with the outcome.”

The voices of the detractors, however, are difficult to ignore.

One is resident Kyle Gojic, who believes the plan will set the stage for a new Great Wall. Instead of affordable rental units, the mother of three young boys fears that glass condos will crowd the shoreline in Mimico as they do in nearby Humber Bay Shores, pushing out families and disconnecting the neighbourhood from the lake.

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“The whole plan is just about maximizing profit on the waterfront. It’s not about community building,” said Gojic.

She is among those urging Keesmaat and Toronto city councillors to improve the policies by reducing height limits, expanding the number of family-sized units and increasing funding for public transit. Her online petition has so far amassed nearly 1,000 signatures.

“This should have been stopped a long time ago. That’s what’s so frustrating,” said Gojic during a recent stroll through her neighbourhood. “We’ve wasted seven years on a plan that no one wants.”

Dino Longo, principal of Longo Development Corp., shares Gojic’s discontent, albeit for entirely different reasons.

Hoping to redevelop a 2.6-hectare property in the study area, Longo said he was keen to participate in what began as a positive, productive public consultation process.

But as the years dragged on, “the vision got lost, basically as a result of the naysayers that were concerned about any change in the area,” he said.

After submitting a series of alternate plans to staff and getting “nothing but blank stares in return,” Longo recently sold the property to capitalize on current market conditions.

For landowners drawing a cash flow from rental properties on the waterfront, the guidelines impose too many demands and restrictions to justify the economic risk of redevelopment, he said.

“It’s a nice-looking plan, but I don’t think it’s one that’s going to create any impetus for change or transformation, which was the whole goal of the whole exercise,” Longo said. “It’s a great opportunity, and I think they blew it.”

Grimes did not respond to calls from the Star. But as Councillor Peter Milczyn sees it, the opposition to the guidelines has more to do with the promises that were made than the plan itself.

“It was oversold to everybody in that community as being this massive trigger for reinvestment in the neighbourhood,” Milczyn said. “How do you develop a perfect vision? That’s a tall order.”

Milczyn, who grew up in one of the nondescript lakeside apartment buildings, said new parkland is one example of the slow-but-steady organic change that has significantly improved the area over the years.

As he sees it, the plan lays out a balanced framework for continued revitalization in a diverse community with “great aspirations.”

“If nobody is happy,” he said, “it might actually mean it’s a relatively good document.”