After facing all kinds of opposition from Mercer Island citizens, the Hines corporation seems to have called off its efforts to develop a block of Town Center property into a five-story retail/apartment building.

The Hines project was incorporated into the city’s moratorium on downtown development on June 1, after being initially exempted. At its last meeting, the City Council extended the moratorium until December.

Representatives from the international real estate company had told the Council that if their project was included in the moratorium, “the land assemblage dies and the public benefits will be killed.”

Those public benefits included 200 commuter parking spots, an upscale grocer and a plaza along S.E. 29th Street, though negotiations with the city on the parking lot stalled and grocers wouldn’t commit due to the uncertainty surrounding the Albertsons site.

Julie King, whose family owns one of the three parcels Hines had under contract, said she received a letter “indicating that Hines is discontinuing its efforts to develop the three properties south of McDonalds,” according to an email sent by Mayor Bruce Bassett to the rest of the City Council.

The other two properties are the Bitney property, home to Terra Bella and a small office building, and the building that houses the Veloce Velo bike shop and Mud Bay pet supply store.

The news has spread around the community, though Mark Clegg, the media relations director for Hines, would not confirm any details. There is “nothing new to report from our end,” he said.

The possibility for calling it quits surfaced after the building plans and scope were denied by the city’s Design Commission last month, with concerns about the mass of the five-story development being “out of scale” with the rest of the neighborhood cited.

The Save our Suburbs (SOS) group brought up the same issue—mass and density—during its first meeting, after Hines had released a massing diagram for a Design Commission study session. That group had been fighting the project ever since, encouraging the Council to put a pause on downtown development, but insisting it “wasn’t about Hines.”

The Council enacted a moratorium, but decided to exempt the Hines project due to ongoing parking negotiations. Those talks began after a proposal to build a parking lot near the community center was met with opposition by Friends of Luther Burbank Park and SOS.

According to the blog My Mercer Island, a termination letter dated June 18 to property owners stated that Hines is exercising its right to terminate the purchase and sale agreement, “due to the recent moratorium.”

Property owner Tom King wrote an e-mail to state Rep. Judy Clibborn in January expressing concerns about the moratorium.

“A deal on our property has come to fruition. However, a very vocal extreme minority is attempting to instigate a moratorium on permitting new projects until they can rezone,” King wrote. “Frankly, our building is not attractive, nor are two more buildings on the development site. As this is the center of the CBD, having an attractive magnet property would help downtown thrive. With the proper developer (Hines is the best), and retail tenants, it would be a magnet to draw customers into the entire retail core. This is what I believe all islanders (with the exception of Save Our Suburbs) wish for.”

Judy King told My Mercer Island that she was “dismayed” to see Hines go.

Some Islanders who supported Hines were left with questions after plans to bring an upscale grocer to the Island fell through.

Initially, the community was divided between a desire for amenities like a large public plaza and a Whole Foods and a growing concern about the character of Town Center, which happened to coincide with a “visioning” process undertaken by the city in 2014.

The Hines project was the biggest question mark hanging over that planning process. A group of Town Center stakeholders, selected by the city, debated about on-street parking, bike lanes and retail frontage, but couldn’t reach a consensus on underlying issues of building height and density. It prompted an investigation into the city’s obligations under the state Growth Management Act (GMA) and a study on impact fees to charge developments for their impacts on the Island’s schools, parks and transportation networks.

The city put the visioning process on hiatus “to best review the achievements so far, and to ensure the next phase is as productive as possible.”

The next Town Center public input meeting, scheduled for July 16, has been postponed. Check the city website for an amended schedule.

Update: Dean Bitney said that his parcel is still “very much under contract with Hines.”