A couple of weeks ago, Raleigh's City Council voted on what many people consider the most ambitious private commercial real estate project attempted in downtown. The site plan for Edison, a four-skyscraper project boasting twin 38-story towers and two smaller cousins, was approved with a 6-2 vote.

What has emerged since: curiosity regarding the rationale provided by Thomas Crowder, one of the councilmen who voted against the plan.

Crowder wanted to spend more time studying some of the design elements before supporting the project. He spent several minutes, for instance, asking how the buildings' shadows would impact smaller storefronts nearby.

He thought it was important to "take a deep breath on this and look at it carefully," he said after the meeting. "It's not going to be something that happens immediately."

Fair enough. Aesthetics are important to Crowder, an architect, and to many of his constituents. And indeed, the project is probably going to get off the ground slower in a sluggish economy than it would in robust years. There's time to hash it out.

But the head-scratcher came when Crowder used The Mecca, the 78-year-old restaurant catty-corner to the Edison site, as an example of a business that would be affected by the shadows.

The Mecca has already been shaded by a 33-story tower, RBC Plaza, which was completed across the street this year, he explained. With Edison, "you're just going to extend the amount of time of shadow until later in the afternoon," he told me.

Then he asked: "How'd you like to have something blocking out all your light?"

Good question.

So I asked Paul Dombalis, co-owner of The Mecca, who said he'd take four buildings full of customers over sunlight. He added: "We can always buy more lights."

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Speaking of more lights: It seemed in April that Progress Energy had settled on a location for a new substation on the southwestern fringe of downtown Raleigh.

Back then, the Raleigh-based utility was thick in condemnation proceedings with The Metropolitan of Raleigh, a partnership that owns the 1 1/2-acre trapezoid at Dawson and Lenoir streets downtown where it eventually planned to build condominiums.

But now Progress is taking a gander at other properties in the area, including a 5 1/2-acre tract owned by PSNC Energy across the street at 600 W. Cabarrus St.

If that's not enough to rankle neighbors in the quaint Boylan Heights neighborhood nearby -- who would rather see no substation near their neighborhood -- the indecision really rubs The Metropolitan investors the wrong way.

Metropolitan partners John Florian and Bobby Lewis bought the old Jones Supply Co. lot for $450,000 in 2000. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars more planning a nine-story building called the Metropolitan, offering 64 condominiums with striking views of an evolving skyline.

The project never got off the ground. But the dirt's value has improved along with its eastern view of the new convention center's shimmer wall.

The developers were hoping to build on it in the next boom. But then came Progress, and its need to power the growing center city.

Now, with the utility scoping out other properties for a substation, plans for The Metropolitan could be back on, if Progress chooses a different property. Or not.

The developers can't make plans until Progress does its eenie-meenie-miney-moe.

"They haven't abandoned the condemnation," Florian says. "So we've really gotten the short end of the stick right now. We can't really do anything. It's all tied up."

Progress expects to make a decision early next year, said spokesman Mike Hughes. "There's no perfect place to ever put infrastructure."

Florian says that several developers and end users have inquired about his lot. "So it puts us in a really difficulty position right now," Florian says.

Never mind that the property has a better chance today to be something other than a substation. "It's the indecision part that's really difficult," he says.

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