Bill Nielsen, La Conner’s Hearing Examiner, has a mountain of documents and hours of lawyer-speak and testimony to sift through.

He has 10 working days – until the middle of December, to decide whether Michael Girdner’s plan to renovate and expand the old Lighthouse building on First Street can proceed.

On Tuesday, about 30 people turned out for the hearing at Maple Hall.

The audience started thinning in the first two hours, which consisted of a procedural inventory of all the exhibits – a stack of paperwork at least six inches thick, tubes of maps and drawings, photographs,...