Thirty-seven waterfront property owners and users, and several agencies beyond Mission, have put their support behind developer Howard Meakin's plan to create a floating restaurant and marina complex on the Fraser River.

Meakin hopes that support will encourage the Mission district council to approve his rezoning and development applications coming before the council on Tuesday night (Sept. 7). To drum up further support, Meakin delivered 12,000 newsletters to Mission residents in mid-August to inform them about his plans. They include bringing the former Friendship 500 barge, anchored in Vancouver's False Creek during Expo 86, to Mission's riverfront. On it he plans to build a $10-million complex that includes a Sturgeon's on the Fraser seafood restaurant, a tap house and café, a home base for fishing and eco-tour operators and float plane services to Vancouver Island,

He won a bidding war with the district to purchase for $1.5 million the former 1.5-acre Meeker Cedar site at the foot of Horne Street, where he will make a parking lot for guests and tour buses.

The proposal makes sense to Jo-Anne Chadwick, who runs Fraser River Safari eco-tours with her husband Rob, and who presented the petition of 37 names to the district council on Aug. 16.

"This project is one of the most exciting things to happen on this waterfront in a long time and it's a critical kickoff for overall development that's being planned," Chadwick told the council.

The barge itself would help attract some of the 2.2 million people who live within an hour's drive of Mission, said Chadwick, a director with the Mission tourism committee awnd the Vancouver Coast and Mountain Tourism Region.

"The development would have a profound effect on the regional tourism industry," wrote Tourism Abbotsford executive director Dan Stefanson in a letter to the Mission council, one of several written in support of Meakin's project.

It would serve as a one-stop hub for tourism that will help unlock the yet untapped tourism opportunities on the Fraser River, Stefanson said.

A recently completed first phase of a comprehensive marketing feasibility study found there was enough interest in waterfront development for the district to move into more refined study.

The results of that first phase will be presented at a public meeting on Sept. 16, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Mission Leisure Centre. The report is at www.mission.ca

CToth@abbtosfordtimes.com