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An up to $250 million high-end development that would transform the Sydney, N.S. waterfront and the city’s downtown could see construction of its first phase beginning this year.

Edgewater is the brainchild of Cape Breton native Doug Doucet, now owner of Halifax-based Doucet developments, a vertically integrated development, construction, marketing and building management company with projects throughout Atlantic Canada.

Doucet was the successful bidder on a tender put out by the Cape Breton Regional Municipality to develop 8.5 acres of largely publicly-owned land in an open gap along the harbour between the Holiday Inn and the Sydney tourist ferry terminal on land once partly occupied by a yacht club.

The first phase would see a combined hotel and apartment complex of different heights horizontally facing the harbour. The second, which still could be a few years away, would be two buildings perpendicularly constructed to the water containing more residences and ground floor commercial spaces.

Amenities would include a public gathering and event plaza and seamless access from downtown through to the city’s waterfront boardwalk.

Plans are for a six-storey hotel and 130 guest rooms and a 10-storey apartment building that could include condos. But Doucet told a recent Sydney Ports Day event that “nothing is finalized until a shovel goes into the ground.”

Doucet Developments declined an interview request, but during a recent podcast hosted by Invest Cape Breton, the region’s economic development agency, Doucet spoke about his vision and some of the challenges of constructing a high-end building in a remote part of the country.

“This has been the riskiest project that Doucet developments or I have ever been involved in,” he said.

That’s because of the high building cost, expected lower return and difficulty of finding skilled labour.

“We’re going to have to beat it seven ways from Sunday,” he said. “We’re going to have to be innovative to get the number where it needs to be and still achieve the goal of what we want — premium waterfront living.”

But, Doucet said, the property itself is magnificent.

“It is one of the best properties that I know of outside of Halifax. It’s a gorgeous waterfront property that deserves what we’re going to do there.”

Some design changes have already been made.

Concrete formwork was a challenge because of a lack of contractors, so most of the complex will be made of structural steel. Many materials can be shipped over water such as precast concrete panels from St. John, N.B. rather than trucked from Toronto.

As well, to reduce the cost per square foot, the apartments themselves will be “considerably smaller units than Sydney’s used to.”

The challenge, Doucet said, is “it’s hard to be innovative when you’re trying to deliver a premium product. It’s hard to give people waterfront living at a luxury level when you’re trying to save money.”

Esthetically, Doucet described the complex’s layout as having a “very appealing entryway from the actual boardwalk up to” the first level of retail, restaurants and cafes.

Doucet emphasized his team has been “really engaging the community” and has had more than 200 meetings with local political officials, businesspeople and the public.

“We will continue to have focus groups,” he said. “I know it’s incredibly important. We’ve got to get this right.”

Doucet said unlike larger municipalities like Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax, a developer in Sydney doesn’t have “the luxury (of) you can build it and they will come. But we’re trying to do something new in a city of 30,000 people on an island which hasn’t seen prosperity in a long time.”

In a region historically dependent on government investment, Edgewater marks a major departure.

“As we know Sydney is a place that hasn’t seen a lot of big money private investment in the last 50 years,” Tyler Cole, an Invest Cape Breton economic development officer, told the Daily Commercial News.

“It’s been a place in decline in a lot of ways — population-wise and economically — and to see big private money put up to revitalize a waterfront I think is really exciting for us.”

But it’s not as if the downtown hasn’t seen some major changes of late. A massive new Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) waterfront campus will open to students this fall.

Lorna Campbell, CEO of the Port of Sydney, said the tourist ferry terminal is one “bookend” and the NSCC campus the other.

The Edgewater, located in between, will add “density into our downtown core and get more activity on the waterfront.”

She said the port has a “responsibility of getting a lot of cruise passengers off our site and into the downtown core and to destinations (around the island).”

This year the terminal will host 119 tourist ships with over 240,000 passengers.