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Construction could finally begin by the end of this year at Little Mountain, which has become Vancouver’s most contentious expanse of mostly empty land.

But even if the developer’s schedule is met — a big “if,” skeptics say, after a decade of delays — many activists still want to know more about the secret 2008 deal that transformed Little Mountain from a bustling low-income community to today’s fenced-in lot that holds little more than broken promises.

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When the then B.C. Liberal government sold the property to developer Holborn, it was both a tragedy and a betrayal, argued Norm Dooley of the Riley Park-South Cambie Community Visions group.

“The tragedy comes in the lost opportunity that has gone on with regard to the housing there,” Dooley said. “The betrayal is, I think that governments have failed us in looking out for the public’s interest with regards to that piece of property.”

Construction of two social housing buildings could start in the next six months, Holborn says, and be completed by 2022. That is 14 years after the company first struck a deal with the province to buy the large property and replace the 224 low-cost homes that would be torn down.