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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The city presented a vision for Yellowknife's waterfront at an open house Tuesday night that included before and after photos replacing shacks from the Woodyard, one of Yellowknife's oldest neighbourhoods, with a boardwalk and waterfront boutiques.

Greg Loftus, who has been living there for 36 years, said the city has been trying, without avail, to eliminate the Woodyard for years and the harbour plan - a strategy for the design and regulation of waters surrounding Yellowknife - is just the latest attempt.

"It comes and goes in spurts," he said. "For awhile they try to get rid of it and then they leave it alone for a few years and then they come back with this plan, I guess.

"Eventually it will fall apart on its own, they should just be patient. Eventually the ants will win," said Loftus.

The Woodyard, which was first settled in 1937, is made up of old shanties and shacks - most without running water. The structures are owned, but they are on Commissioner's Land.

"People own the shanties, but have no connection to the land, either financial or legal," said Mayor Gord Van Tighem. The Woodyard isn't the city's jurisdiction, it's the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs, he said.

When Yellowknifer asked for a copy of the before and after photos, Donna Hinde, the project manager for the plan with Toronto's The Planning Partnership, stated in an e-mail Thursday, "we're in the process of modifying the Woodyard image and it's not finished yet."

Van Tighem said the photos, like many other elements in the harbour plan being compiled by southern consultants, aren't necessarily what the city has envisioned for the waterfront; they're being presented to start a discussion.

The harbour plan will be available as a formal report in the fall, said Van Tighem.

One of the recommendations is to remove the current boat launch in Old Town because of issues of congestion and lack of parking.

Also included are possible locations for marinas,

floatplane docks and marina-based float home communities, along with models for a harbour authority, which would clear up some of the ambiguity around who has jurisdictional authority in waters around Yellowknife.

Currently, jurisdiction is split between four federal departments, three territorial departments, the city and the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.

The city hopes to have all parties sign a memorandum of understanding in order to develop a municipal harbour division that will address the lack of enforcement currently taking place.

Part of that will include regulating houseboats.

On a poster at the open house at the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre Tuesday night, it said a project to be completed in the next one to five years is an interim houseboat zone, which would limit the number of houseboats in the water and where they can be.

It will also require houseboat owners to enter into a signed agreement with the city that will, among other things, stipulate potential fees.

While looking at a map of Yellowknife's waterfront Tuesday, Gary Vaillancourt, a houseboater since 1981, told Fiona Duckett, a coastal engineer with another consulting firm involved in the project, Baird and Associates, about how the houseboat community and Old Town developed in an ad hoc way.

"That's its charm," he said, adding that his concern is the city is trying to crowd all of the houseboats into one area.

Vaillancourt also told Duckett it would be very difficult to convince houseboaters to move away from a free-style layout into a marina-based houseboat community, as was suggested as a possibility in the information presented at the meeting.

"The plan isn't to go in and make everything look cookie-cutter," she responded, noting that whether there is a marina-based houseboat community or not, there will still be space for houseboats near the southern tip of Jolliffe Island.

The concerns and suggestions given to the consultants at the meeting and during focus groups held all week will be taken into consideration and incorporated into the final report.

The report will then be discussed and debated by council. Implementation of the recommendations will take place if the report is adopted by city council.

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