Local investors are looking to create an entire new community in tiny Port Glasgow, and their vision is about to pass the planning stages with shovels expected in the ground early next year.
Residents in the sleepy village between Chatham and London on the Lake Erie shoreline have been battling developers for seven years, but the planned community appears to be almost a reality.
Resident Bruce Swain says "We got kind of a little bit of paradise here, and we kind of want to keep it that way."
But the lands above Port Glasgow represent a vision for Ron Koudys and his partner, who are behind Seaside Developments - a new tourist attraction and year-round waterfront community.
"We are basically creating a town. So we are building the downtown, we’re building the trails, the gateways, the housing portions of it, everything," Koudys explains, although it could take a decade for all the elements to be completed.
The first to go up will be a hotel and restaurant right on the waterfront. Like the rest of the planned community the architecture will be designed to attract not only residents, but also tourists.
Koudys says "If you think about Niagara-on-the-Lake or Stratford...they've tried to develop a consistency in the architectural form."
The community will be designed to attract wide demographics and to encourage new amenities for existing residents, but that's still not enough for those who'd rather keep Port Glasgow quiet.
Swain says "It just seems to me, they are trying to bring everything down here that everybody comes down here to get away from."
An environmental assessment still stands in the way of the first buildings planned for the 2104.
However, if the hotel goes ahead the operator of a well-known pub in Bayfield is slated to start operations in Port Glasgow.
