Spending an hour listening to John Kane extol the virtues of North Hills East -- as I did this week -- is like touring a fancy house with a persuasive Realtor. You come away eager to buy.

I'm glad I'm not an elected official and I don't have to decide whether to give Kane the $75 million in city and county aid he says he needs.

It seems a no-brainer to give Kane Realty everything it wants for North Hills East, a proposed extension of the upscale North Hills on the other side of Six Forks Road. Yet Raleigh City Manager Russell Allen, a smart fellow, is far from persuaded.

My meeting with Kane was in a conference room at Kane Realty filled with maps and a scale model suggesting how nice the project would be. (And a subsequent drive around the site revealed how shabby much of it is now).

He wanted everyone to understand that, under the arrangement proposed, Kane Realty would provide funds to repay the bonds and therefore the debt payments on those bonds would not compete for scarce public funds. (And, for the record, a story in last week's North Raleigh News comparing the $75 million to other capital projects did not mean to imply that the project would compete; we only meant to put a huge expenditure into perspective.)

Kane estimates that if they get the $75 million and can build something really nice, the development would generate an extra $528 million for the city and county after the bonds are repaid. He puts the burden of proof on those who oppose the $75 million loan, given the potential return on the investment.

"If you're going to look at that and say, 'I don't want that half a billion dollars,' someone has to ask, 'Why don't you want it?' "

Well, it's not that simple, Allen told me in a phone conversation later. He acknowledged that under Kane Realty's proposal the burden of repaying the bonds would fall on Kane Realty, not the city or county.

But Allen said agencies that rate the city's creditworthiness may look askance on the increase in debt no matter what arrangement the city makes to pay them back.

"It's a significant amount of debt," Allen said. "They do look at levels of debt that a city has, particularly growing cities."

And if the request for aid starts a trend, that would raise eyebrows even more, he added. Of course, Kane says North Hills East's "unique" benefits should discourage that.

Glad I don't have to sort this one out.