Maybe next time. The raging casino controversy shoved the latest version of a Court Avenue development proposal to the back burner at last week’s Des Moines City Council meeting, leaving the would-be developers hoping for attention at the Aug. 9 meeting.

Jim Hubbell, who is pushing the plan along with Harry Bookey, expressed confidence that the council will approve the new phased approach to the project. “We’re going to propose that we go ahead with the redevelopment of the Spaghetti Works building,” he said. “We’d like to get the design work started right away, and construction probably would start right after the first of the year.” That phase of the plan would create about 50 apartments in the four-story building at 310 Court Ave.

Next, according to Hubbell, “at the end of November we would submit a new application for tax credits for a 52-unit building at the southeast corner of Fourth (Street) and Court (Avenue).” The project’s failure to receive tax credits last spring halted the original plan. The good news is, “the process has taken long enough that we’re back into the optimum time frame to get tax credits again,” Hubbell said. “This time, we would ask for a much smaller number of credits, and our points were good last time, so we feel we have a good shot at it.”

Hubbell, chairman and chief executive officer of CB Richard Ellis/Hubbell Commercial Realty, said the developers also would seek funds for the new apartment building through HOME, a federal block grant program that allocates $2 billion annually to states and cities to create affordable housing.

“That would start to reduce what we had proposed for city subsidies, so we suspect everybody would be in favor of that,” he said. If such funding were received in March 2005, construction could start next summer. Finally, the developers hope to construct condominium buildings on both sides of Fourth Street south of Court. “Our desire would be to start the 40-unit building on the east side of the street next summer,” Hubbell said.

However, “if we don’t get the tax credits, that would send us back to the drawing board,” he said. “We would either have to abandon the project or build condos without anything on the corner. In the meantime, we will be under construction at the Spaghetti Works and fully obligated to complete that project.”

City Councilman Chris Coleman, who has worked on Court Avenue development ideas for several years, expressed support for the current Hubbell-Bookey proposal. In an e-mail, he said he considers it an improvement on a preliminary agreement reached in June. “We should have strong support,” he wrote.

City Councilwoman Christine Hensley said in an e-mail: “I support it based on the phased-in approach. That makes the financing much more acceptable and also gives them the opportunity to proceed for the next round of tax credits.”

After some reductions in the scope of the project, Hubbell said he estimates its cost has increased by less than $100,000 during the past year of negotiations.