When Nanaimo won a large provincial grant to redevelop a long-derelict stretch of its industrial waterfront, few residents expected the money to provoke such a bitter public controversy. The council has narrowed a lengthy list of submissions down to two very different visions, and it must now determine which one deserves the funding. The first proposal calls for a large open-air amphitheatre capable of hosting touring concerts and summer festivals, while the second would divide the identical ground into a patchwork of community gardens, small plazas, and shaded gathering spaces. Alicia Fenwick, who chairs the redevelopment committee, maintains that whichever way the vote falls, the finished waterfront should draw residents back to a neglected quarter of the city that they have deliberately avoided for the better part of a generation.

Devlin Roache, whose events company would bid to run the venue, makes no secret of his conviction that the grant belongs to the amphitheatre. A signature performance space, he contends, would establish Nanaimo firmly on the national touring circuit and attract precisely the travellers who currently drive straight past the community on their way toward larger centres. "A garden is a pleasant enough thing," Roache concedes, "but it will never fill a hotel room or a restaurant table on a rainy Tuesday in November. One busy summer of headline acts would do more for local businesses than a decade of vegetable plots, and the benefit would spread to every shop downtown."