''It's certainly not pretty,'' Italian and Sons part-owner Pasquale Trimboli told Fairfax this week. ''But it is going to be fantastic when it [the $30 million Arte Apartments development] is complete.''

Mr Trimboli and his family have a keen interest in the future of the long-awaited project, which will feature two storeys of retail and residential space and four storeys of apartments, as well as underground car parking. It is almost a decade since they signed up to buy the ground floor.

He is confident the project will be finished, as per the latest promise by representatives of John Russell, the developer, around the third quarter next year. ''You won't know this area in five years' time,'' he said. ''This will be the place to be in Canberra.''

Others, while also looking forward to a major boost for the inner city, are waiting for deeds rather than relying on words.

''It is not a question of how it [Arte Apartments] will be finished,'' Jim Blakey, of Braddon Cellars, said. ''That has been sorted out. It is a question of when.''

Mr Blakey, who has been in business in Braddon for more than a decade, said he had been looking at the hole for at least half the time he had been there.

''He [John Russell,who is also behind Astina and the Rex] has had a bad run,'' he said. Issues at Arte had included builders going bust and contamination problems.

''Of course we would like to see the development proceed. It would give us a more stable population rather than relying on workday traffic as people are leaving their offices and heading for their homes in the suburbs.

''It would be good to have people living here. It is a shame it has dragged on so long.''

Mr Trimboli said it was ironic the development, which kick-started interest in Lonsdale Street as a slice of Carlton in the ACT, looked like being one of the last of the developments announced last decade to come on line.

He is not bitter about the delays and gives credit to John Russell for staying the course and overcoming the various problems as they have arisen.

He said some CBD developments had mushroomed into existence with no real purpose other than to generate a short-term profit.

''When that happens quality takes a back seat and the long-term future of the buildings is compromised.''

Mr Trimboli, an architect, has a strong affinity with Braddon. He said there had been a definite shift in the centre of gravity away from the parliamentary triangle in the past 10 years.

He believed Mr Russell's original push to develop the 110-112 Lonsdale Street site was a major contributor to this and influenced the ACT government's decision to increase building heights on the eastern side of the street from two storeys to six.

Semi high-rise developments such as Arte are true to the original Griffin vision.

''They [Walter Burley and Marion Griffin] had a very Parisian vision,'' he said. ''It was of a streetscape of boulevards lined by shops and apartments. It got lost in the translation [with the move to a satellite city model]. What we are looking for here is something more in keeping with people living, working and playing in the city.''

Canberrans had a greater affinity with the Melbourne lifestyle than the Sydney equivalent, he said, and people were looking for the soul of Canberra.

Braddon, one of the city's oldest commercial hubs, had that sort of soul and was the closest the ACT had to the Carlton experience with textured streetscapes formed by the integration of old and new buildings and businesses side by side.

Mr Trimboli said he would hate to see every structure levelled for 21st century high-rises. There was a place for old and new.

''Lonsdale Street is one of the few strips in Canberra where you have retail facing retail,'' he said. ''That wasn't a factor in ACT town planning. We usually have doughnut developments with retail facing commercial or residential.''

He feared that parts of the strip, bought by speculative investors years ago, were programmed for demolition when their profit point was reached. If and when that happened part of the reason why suburbanites wanted to come into Braddon for an authentic city experience would be lost.

The vibrant demographic, consisting as it does of young people in student accommodation, academics who choose to live close to the university, older retired people with homes in the area and a broad spectrum of different cultures, contributed to a sense of neighbourhood.

''Weekends here are fantastic,'' Mr Trimboli said. ''We need more parking, but that will come with new development.''

Other business people are less sanguine about the amount of time it is taking for Arte to be finished.

Steve Dawn, the owner of The Civic Pub which sits on the city side of the fenced-off hole, is critical of what he sees as a lack of action by the territory government.

''The ACT government does not give a damn about people trying to do business,'' he said.

''If you want to plant a tree on a hill then that is fine, they are right behind you. But, under Katy Gallagher, it's just disgusting.

''I'm not blaming the developers; their builder went broke and they've had to work through that. What is crazy is that all the time there has been no work on the site TAMS [Territory and Municipal Services] has still had a no-parking zone along the street.

''There has been a major loss of parking. TAMS are totally incompetent. They are not monitoring the site and this has been a direct financial impost on us and other businesses.''

Parking was permitted along the site frontage when Fairfax Media visited this week.

Other business owners said that while no-parking signs had been in place for some time after the work stopped, they were removed after complaints from a number of businesses, including The Civic Pub.