Monday’s City Council meeting opened with a surprising announcement – Hudson Group is not moving forward with a senior housing project on Liberty Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

The decision brings an end to a matter that had dominated council meetings in recent months and prompted a federal lawsuit against the city and state over approvals for the project. That lawsuit will now end, as does years of back-and-forth squabbling over a project that in 2017 was seen as a key piece of Warren’s downtown redevelopment and, by 2024, had become a topic people were tired of hearing about.

Hudson’s decision to end the project is probably for the best at this point. Eagle’s Crest had become an albatross. The city couldn’t back out of an increasingly unpopular project because of the agreements it had made years ago, but community opposition wasn’t going to go away either. We opined at one point in this interminable saga that a court would have to put an end to the project – but there was another path available that Hudson officials decided to take.

We’re back to square one with a key site in downtown’s revitalization. It’s a golden opportunity that we hope doesn’t go down the road of division that we have traveled in recent years with riverfront development and Eagle’s Crest.

No project will make everyone happy. But the last thing Warren needs when it comes to competing for state economic development dollars is a reputation as a tough place to complete projects. State support is not guaranteed, and another drawn out, contentious development process is a black eye our grant applications don’t need moving forward.

The slate is clean. Can we draw something beautiful, or will we fight over who gets to use the blue crayon?