Raleigh officials have given the development group behind the Charter Square project in downtown Raleigh more time to get the project started.

The City Council approved a request Tuesday to extend the required construction start date in the development agreement to Sept. 20, 2013.

Under the previous agreement, the developers were required to begin construction by Thursday or the city would have to repurchase the property.

The city sold the Charter Square development group a 1.75-acre site on Fayetteville Street in November 2008.

The development group has five years from the sale date to build an office tower on the site or the city must repurchase the property. That date likely will also need to be extended at some point over the next 14 months.

The Charter Square project is ultimately expected to include two towers. It has a 553-space underground deck that was built by the developer and then sold to the city.

Charter Square, like many other office tower projects proposed before the recession, has been delayed indefinitely while the development group tries to line up the necessary tenants that would allow the project to get financed.

At last week's tree lighting on Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh, developer Roland Gammon loved what he saw but not all of what he heard.

What he saw is people flocking downtown to the new City Plaza, Raleigh's $14.8 million public square at the south end of Fayetteville Street.

In addition to the tree lighting, the city has installed a temporary ice rink on a slice of the plaza that runs between the Bank of America building and the proposed site for Charter Square, a two tower project that Gammon's firm White Oak Properties is a partner in.

Charter Square is one of several downtown projects that has been delayed indefinitely by the credit crisis. What bothered Gammon was hearing people say that the ice rink was a great use for the space after "those developers ran out of money."

"I'm sure I heard that ... at least a dozen times," Gammon said. "Our building is not being built, not because we ran out of money--we've got plenty of money--but not enough money to build a building in this awful economy."

If downtown Raleigh had as much interest from lenders as it did parking, the City Council and City Manager Russell Allen would be very happy people.

Last week the council voted to lease the property at 301 Hillsborough Street to Campbell University so that the school can turn it into a parking lot. You may recall that the land was supposed to be sold to the Reynolds Company, who were going to develop it into a hotel. But Reynolds could never nail down financing for the project, and the City Council and Allen got tired of waiting so they terminated the agreement earlier this year. 

Now the giant hole in the ground at 301 Hillsborough has been filled, and Campbell Law students and faculty will soon be able to park across from the school's new home, which opens next month. The lease agreement was approved at the same meeting where the council gave the developers behind Charter Square more time to get their two-tower project off the ground. The developers were given an extension largely because they are about to finish an underground parking deck below the site, which is at the south end of Fayetteville Street next to the City Plaza. 

The city will buy the deck for about $25 million once it's complete. And let's not forget the Wake County parking deck that was just finished on the other side of the convention center. That deck is supposed to be surrounded by Empire Properties L Building, another project halted by the credit crunch. 

Downtown Raleigh already had a lot of parking before these latest decks, so it seems reasonable to ask why the city appears to have never met a parking deck/lot it didn't like. The leasing of 301 Hillsborough is a sensible short-term use of the property, but are all these parking decks necessary? They're not cheap, after all, particularly when they're being build underground. 

What do you think?