The city of Butler has endured a long wait for a major development regarding the proposed Centre City project.

Now that a significant achievement has been realized, the city and it leaders should adopt a “failure is not an option” attitude going forward.

The city must not fail in proving to the state that it can come up with $2 million in matching money for the $2 million state grant awarded to the project on Monday.

After that, the city must not fail in making progress on elements of the project not covered by the initial $4 million.

The grant and matching money are to be used for construction of a hotel and parking structure in the project area bounded by South Main, East Jefferson, East Cunningham and South McKean streets. Other elements of the project not included in this initial phase involve a mini convention center and retail and residential development.

For years, the project has been envisioned as the needed shot-in-the-arm for a downtown revival not seen since the exodus of retailers to suburban shopping centers and malls decades ago.

It’s a project capable of bringing people to the downtown — bringing new life to the downtown — not only during the business day, but at night and on weekends, as well.

As important, or perhaps even more important, the project has the potential to spark new elements of life downtown.

Existing businesses will benefit as elements of Centre City materialize.

It won’t be a quick process, as demonstrated by the first phase, which is expected to take a couple of years to complete. But having the first phase under way could entice development of the additional phases more quickly than if this initial phase remained in limbo.

Perry O’Malley, former Butler Redevelopment Authority executive director who currently serves in that position on the county level, summarized Centre City to date when he observed, “Six years we’ve been chasing (Centre City), fighting every year to have it funded. This should be a big deal and jump-start a lot of other things downtown.”

But first the city must not fail in proving to Harrisburg that it can meet its end of the grant/matching-funds deal.

O’Malley concurred that “if everything goes extremely smoothly, you could be walking into a new downtown hotel in two years.”

The city redevelopment agency’s private partner in Centre City is the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. But economic conditions on the federal and state levels have kept the project at a standstill for nearly eight years since the project was first proposed.

The state grant is a sign that the economy is slowly making a comeback, and the city merits praise for being positioned — by way of previous planning — for moving the project forward immediately, now that state funding has begun to loosen up.

Critical is how quickly the local financial details can be finalized. What must not come into play is any doubt about whether acquiring the local matching funds is possible — even if there are temporary setbacks.

With each passing year, some people have understandably become pessimistic about the project’s prospects. But officials guiding the effort haven’t fallen into a defeatist attitude, and their continuing optimism now stands to produce results.

Indeed, failure is not an option. Butler needs this shot-in-the-arm and what could follow.