Bulldozers are cleaning up the rubble that used to be a miniature golf course near the Water Garden Cinema 6 in Pleasant Grove.

When the development was first proposed, it was with some fanfare. North Utah County had been without a first-run theater for decades.

It was supposed to be an actual water garden, with lots of pools, fountain and walking paths. Once the theater opened, soon to follow was a steak house, which would be the first of five major restaurants in the development. The fact that the miniature golf course was built gave some hope that the development had the momentum to drive the building of at least one of the restaurants.

We even took the kids there early on to play miniature golf and walk around the grounds. The pools were there, and some walking paths, and lots of promise.

Of course, the plans for Pleasant Grove's Water Gardens were never fully realized. Maybe some day a steakhouse will be built on the site, but right now the pile of rubble is just one more reason why we have become skeptics when someone announces the next big thing for north Utah County.

To be sure, we've seen a lot of neat stuff come along in recent years.

Thanksgiving Point seemed like an unrealistic dream when Alan Ashton and Johnny Miller first stood on the dry dirt of the former Fox Farm and announced they would build a world class golf course and world renowned gardens on the spot.

The saving grace for that particular project was that it was the brainchild of people who had both the money and the perseverance to make a dream a reality, rather than rely on investors to come up with the necessary cash.

But even Thanksgiving Point has had disappointments. I remember going to a high blown press conference where developers announced plans to build a huge shopping center around a theme of great ports of the world. The centerpiece of the project was a man-made river where shoppers could travel by gondola from one country to another, sort of like an Epcot Center on the water.

Funding for that fell through, and supporters were left up their artificial creek without a paddle.

Similarly, plans to create a world-class commercial-residential center on the bones of Geneva Steel ran out of steam about six months after a development group announced them. Other efforts are underway, and Vineyard seems posed to explode any time now, or maybe once the current housing crisis has sorted itself out.

When I first moved to American Fork in 1982 there was talk about a massive shopping center in the west part of town, with talk about a major developer and a ZCMI -- you remember ZCMI don't you? -- as an anchor.

It was 20 years before The Meadows became a reality, anchored by Wal-Mart.

It's proof that sometimes these developmental dreams come true, although not exactly as elegant as the original plan may have been.

But just as often, it seems, the dreams die from lack of funds, or vision.

So don't blame us if we wait for the heavy equipment to start preparing for a foundation before we celebrate the nine-story hotel John Hammons says he is going to build in Pleasant Grove, or the proposed Frank Gehry project Brandt Anderson claims north of Cabela's.

What we are learning now is that just digging a hole may not be enough.

Many thought SunCrest was foolhardy when it was first proposed, and local communities refused to participate, so the developers found a willing accomplice in Draper City. Now the developer has declared bankruptcy, and we are learning those same individuals may prove to be right.

And the unfinished north tower of Orem's Midtown Village, brought to a standstill by a shaky economy, threatens to become a bight yellow monument to unrealistic expectations.

At the Water Gardens, they are burying the evidence of optimism, and in the process, teaching us all that, in the future, skepticism may be the best policy.