The six-story apartment and retail building planned to replace Jet City Espresso at South Second Street and Main Avenue South is still in the works, but has been delayed indefinitely.

“Like thousands of projects in the region, until they have financing, they won’t be able to proceed,” Renton’s Economic Development Director Suzanne Dale Estey said in an e-mail.

City officials had been touting the U-shaped development, to be called 2nd and Main Apartments, as the gateway to a revitalized downtown.

Designed by TSA Architects, the building is planned to contain 101 apartments, one level of retail space and one level of underground parking. The complex would take up five downtown lots.

The proposed project was approved by hearing examiner Fred Kaufman in May 2008 and construction had been tentatively scheduled for August or September of 2008.

N & C Investments LLC is the project’s developer. The Bellevue company owns the five downtown lots. 2nd and Main is still in the company’s books and the company is ready to submit for permits. But the project is delayed because of the slow economy, says Iolanthe Chan-McCarthy, a principal owner of N & C.

“So many aspects of getting that project going are out of our control,” Chan-McCarthy says.

She says N & C is waiting for some of its other projects to stabilize and for banks to start freeing up capital. She says N & C does not want to rush into adding apartments to the apartment-heavy downtown, especially in the current recession.

The delay of 2nd and Main Apartments extends the lease of Jet City Espresso, the only business or building on the five lots set aside for the proposed project.

Still, like most businesses, the coffee shop housed in an old gas station is struggling to weather the recession.

“We will only be open if people support us,” says Jet City owner Debbie Natelson.

She recently put Jet City recently up for sale again.