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Ghosts and elephants
Some folks don’t worry about Shire Hall spending $300 million it doesn’t have. They aren’t bothered by the fact that the County has never seen a project of this size and complexity. They aren’t troubled by Shire Hall’s lack of experience in planning or building anything on this scale. They don’t worry about debt.
They are confident there are safeguards in place—that Shire Hall wouldn’t do it if it couldn’t pull it off. Surely, Council wouldn’t approve a plan that relies on the population growing by six times if they weren’t entirely certain it would happen. Would they?
Sadly, there are plenty of examples where a combination of giddy optimism, unbridled hubris and a belief that this-time-is-different has produced gloriously bad outcomes.
WHITE ELEPHANT
The Mirabel airport opened to great fanfare in October 1975, just in time for the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. Optimism was overflowing. Federal government planners had predicted that the Dorval airport would soon be saturated—that 20 million passengers would soon be flowing through Montreal airports every year (17 million through Mirabel alone).
Nearly 100,000 acres of farmland were expropriated an hour north of the city to make way for the largest airport in the world. More than $500 million ($2.9 billion in 2025 dollars) was spent to erect the gleaming future hub of international passengers and cargo.
Sadly, Mirabel never saw more than three million passengers through its gates in any year.
It became the biggest infrastructure dud in Canadian history— known around the world as Canada’s white elephant.
The last flight took off from Mirabel in 2004. Ten years later, the terminal was demolished after spending $30 million in the intervening decade maintaining the abandoned terminal buildings.
About 11,000 acres were returned to farmers in 2014. By then, billions of dollars were spent and lost. The memory of Mirabel remains an enduring emblem of terrible planning, misplaced optimism, and a useless waste of taxpayer money.
CIUDAD FANTASMA
About 40 kilometres outside Madrid is the planned city of Valdeluz. An entire community was imagined, planned and mostly constructed on the grassy moors of La Alcarria. Roads, a train station, waterworks, buildings, and homes were conjured from the earth—to house a community of about 33,000 people.
The concept city was intended to ease overcrowding and congestion in the Spanish metropolis in the new millennium. Developers expected upscale buyers to arrive in large numbers.
It didn’t happen. Instead, a global financial crisis struck in 2008. Construction stopped. And never restarted.
Today, fewer than 6,000 people live in what residents describe as a ghost town (ciudad fantasma).
There is a lone supermarket, a corner shop, and a medical centre that is open two days a week. Entire neighbourhood blocks sit empty. Unfinished. Open to the elements. Subject to decay and vandalism. Wide boulevards with no cars—no traffic. Security teams patrol deserted streets to ensure the safety of the smattering of residents.
Joaquín Ormazábal was one of those who bought the promise.
“We thought the Spanish property market was one giant party, in which prices would always go up and up and up,” Ormazábal told the Guardian in 2011.
But when global credit markets suddenly froze in 2008, the party was over. Homes purchased before the crash were valued at half their original value afterward. Prices never recovered.
The optimism of the boom years evaporated. Folks like Ormazábal, who had their life savings invested in the promise of a shiny new vibrant city, were now trapped in a ghost town. They couldn’t sell their homes. They had too little equity to start over somewhere else. No one, it seems, wants to live in a ghost town.
“Some mornings, I feel like such an idiot,” said Ormazábal.
Meanwhile, Spanish taxpayers continue to fund the €1.12 billion (C$1.7 billion) spent on roads, waterworks, utilities and a high-speed rail station.
Valdeluz is a cautionary tale of municipal overreach— a case study of unguarded municipal delusion. It’s an example of what can go wrong when big ambitions overwhelm reason and prudence.
In both Mirabel and Valdeluz, there were big flashing warning signs. All of them ignored.
In Ontario today, the profound slowdown in new home construction should serve as a caution to municipal planners in Prince Edward County. The experience of Mirabel and Valdeluz ought to inspire humility—and a fresh look at the assumptions upon which $300 million of spending relies.
If we build it there is no certainty they will come. Indeed, the evidence suggests otherwise. Must we make the same mistake? Confusing a dream with real life?
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