Let’s get this straight. The city works for a solid year with developers on the Scaleybark project, a showcase transit oriented development site for CATS’s $500 million South Blvd. line. Several very complex options are weighed. One plan using a $5 million public subsidy to Bank of America is selected in January as the winner. But by April the deal is dead because another subsidy — this one in the form of federal urban redevelopment tax credits — turns out not to be a sure thing.

Back to square one. Ahem. Who got fired? Not with the city. Dream on. At BofA. This was a massive waste of the bank’s time and resources. If the deal totally turned the tax credits, how do you propose the deal without knowing if you have the tax credits in hand?

Aside: There is also something fishy about BofA — one of the world’s largest financial institutions — suddenly getting squeamish over cash flow on a signature development project in the bank’s home town.

Did the city at some point promise that the credits would be there? The story we have so far just does not make sense.

Charlotte city councilman Don Lochman isn’t completely buying it either. He told The Rhino Times that he thinks other factors had to play a role besides the Great Tax Credit Gap of 2007.

“It’s been alluded to me that there were things about the deal that fell part beyond the tax credits,” Lochman told the paper.

Lochman did not float any “things,” but we will. Informed speculation is a MeckDeck hallmark. One, CATS needs a parking lot of some kind sooner rather than later because CATS wants to get some trains up and running before the November transit tax repeal vote. Two, CATS very much prefers to do some sort of tax-increment financed project at the site — possibly with Crosland? — in order to gin up interest in a largely TIF-built North corridor line.

And here’s the kicker. CATS will likely wind up spending $350,000 for a temporary parking lot at the site. That’s a $350,000 investment that’ll get torn up when the permanent development for the site comes around.

But by all means, keep cheerleading overly complex and ambitious plans for the 17-acre site. Wishing — and enough of other people’s money — just might make it so.