It doesn't take a genius to work out that Tesco's decision to pull out of building a new store in Bridlington has put the cat among the pigeons.
By confirming the intention to stick with its current store instead, the retailer has effectively punched a giant hole in East Riding Council's regeneration plans for the resort.
Critics have long voiced concerns over plans that largely hinged on the whim of Britain's biggest retailer.
Now, with Tesco profits falling, their fears appear to have been realised.
While the council has always defended the amount of public money being spent on Brid's stop-start facelift, the sums involved are pretty eye-watering compared with what has so far been achieved on the ground.
Back in September 2009, a report revealed the figure even then stood at £51.4m, with funding coming from Yorkshire Forward, Europe and East Riding Council. In other words, taxpayers' dosh.
The same report included proposals that were subsequently agreed to commit another £1.6m between April 2010 and May 2012.
Nearly £1m of that was earmarked for "consultancy costs", which partly reveals the real winners in the grandly named Bridlington Renaissance project.
Step forward a clutch of well-paid external consultants who, since 2004, have been master-planning the town's future.
Last year, at a resumed planning inquiry, several consultants put the case for pressing ahead with a regeneration programme predicated on Tesco's relocation to a new site.
Among them was Nora Galley, a familiar face who I had previously encountered saying much the same about the Hull city centre masterplan.
Back in the day, she championed the idea of "shifting the retail focus" of the city centre to the yet-to-be-built St Stephen's shopping centre.
A decade later, St Stephen's is booming and the rest of the city centre is dying on its knees. Although not exactly thriving at the moment, perhaps Bridlington has just been spared a similar fate.
