CHAPEL HILL - Ram Development Co. chairman Peter Cummings hopes to break ground on the 140 West Franklin project by next summer.

The Town Council approved the nine-story condo complex at Parking Lot No. 5 nearly three years ago. Candidates campaigning this fall often wondered aloud whether the project would actually come to fruition.

After struggling to pre-sell enough units to attract financing, Ram dropped its prices last spring. When that didn't work, the developer closed its sales office on Franklin Street and solicited new bids from general contractors.

As a result, construction costs dropped by about 30 percent, and Cummings now pegs the total cost of the project around $60 million.

With sales restarting on Labor Day, the price for the smallest unit dropped from $360,000 to about $180,000. A 3,334-square-foot penthouse originally priced at $1.8 million has become a 3,003-square-foot "terrace home" at $1.4 million.

Two-bedroom condos, which will account for about half of the building, have dropped from a range of $420,000-$810,000 to a range of $300,000-$570,000.

"We're going to build it for less, and we're going to sell it for less," said Cummings. "We had, in an ironic way, turned a negative into a positive."

Ram had based its original prices on 2007 construction bids and introduced them into a faltering economy a year later.

"We opened the project two or three weeks after Lehman failed," Cummings said. "Fear took over. ... What people tend to do when they're fearful is make bad decisions or make no decisions."

Since advertising the new prices, though, Ram has sold 30 of its 122 market-rate condos. Cummings expects to sell another 30 this winter and spring.

"I've been in this business long enough to know when you're getting momentum and when you're not," said Cummings, who has been investing in real estate since the 1970s.

The Orange Community Home Trust will manage another 18 one- and two-bedroom units under $100,000 for qualified moderate-income buyers.

Once half of the units are sold, Ram will break ground, with plans to spend some $30 million of its own money and borrow the other half. Cummings figures Ram has already spent about $5 million planning and marketing the project.

The town will contribute about $8 million to replace the current surface parking lot with new public parking underneath Ram's building.