Deer Creek Crossing is dead.

The planned retail development on Route 910 in Harmar was vilified by community members and environmentalists yet had received a $22 million tax increment financing deal.

For the past several years, opponents had argued that the development, at routes 28 and 910 in Harmar, would destroy a pristine trout stream and divert millions in sales from existing retailers in Allegheny County.

The project, which could not be blocked in court or by public protests, has been stopped by Target.

Maurice Strul, assistant director of the Allegheny County Department of Economic Development, said Friday that the project developer couldn't make the finances work once one of its anchor stores, Target, located elsewhere and pulled out of its commitment to Deer Creek Crossing.

Kimco Real Estate, which was one of the partners in the original plan, is now looking at building a mall that will either comprise a smaller group of big-box stores or an outdoor mall of retail shops.

Either of those projects, Mr. Strul said, would be substantially different from the original plan and would not meet the requirements of the tax increment financing, known as a TIF, because they could not generate enough tax money to pay off the loans.

Allegheny County Council had approved the TIF for Deer Creek Crossing in 2005.

Tax increment financing is when municipal and county governments and the school district take out loans to build the road, water and sewer projects necessary for the development. Those loans would then be paid off with future property tax revenue from the development.

Mr. Strul said the new development would go by the name "The Shops at Harmar."

Opponents of Deer Creek Crossing were thrilled to hear the original plan will not go through.

"There's no tears being shed by Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future and the people who fish that stream," said John Hanger, the president of PennFuture.

He said his organization is not against all development of the site, but the plan for Deer Creek Crossing was all wrong.

"Anybody who wants to develop that needs to respect and protect that stream," Mr. Hanger said. "The idea that a TIF would be paid by the taxpayers to ruin a trout stream was outrageous. ... We should use TIFs to redevelop brownfields and former industrial sites."

"Maybe the era of giving away money to shear our hillsides is over," said Republican county Councilman Dave Fawcett, who sponsored an ordinance in council to repeal the tax increment financing for Deer Creek Crossing.

"I think it ought to be a smaller project," he said.