The Urban Redevelopment Authority is giving the city's anointed Fifth-Forbes retail-housing developer until October to present a comprehensive plan for the project.

Millcraft Industries Inc. is expected by then to outline what public help it needs with the project, what it will spend, how much revenue it expects to produce for itself and for the city, and what it sees as the target market for its housing units. It may also reveal details publicly at that time of some of the retailers committing to new Downtown store locations.

Mayor Bob O'Connor chose Millcraft two months ago as the developer of 20 properties the URA has assembled to remake the center of Downtown, including the former G.C. Murphy store. Under a development arrangement approved by the URA board yesterday, it has exclusive rights through October to work with the agency's staff in planning the corridor's future, and it pays nothing to the URA for that right.

"There's a myriad of complex issues you have to wrestle with" to undertake the project, and numerous unanswered questions that Millcraft will have to address by October before it could receive formal board approval to proceed, said URA Executive Director Jerome Dettore.

When designated in May as the master developer, Canonsburg-based Millcraft announced a broad plan to use the URA properties for a $71 million project involving 200 apartments and condominiums and 45,000 square feet of stores.

In related action yesterday, the board agreed to share with Millcraft the cost of an appraiser to set a fair sales price for the various properties. The authority paid $13.8 million over the last seven years to acquire the properties, and would sell them to the private developer.

The URA also agreed to buy one more property that will be part of the project, a former Foto Hut at 242 Forbes Ave., from the Order of Italian Sons & Daughters of America for $400,000.

It will also contribute up to $30,000 toward the cost of a consultant to be hired by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership to lead a study of Market Square's future appearance and uses.

In other action, URA board members voted to accept $2.2 million in federal funding to proceed with conversion of one of the two Hot Metal bridges over the Monongahela River into a bicycle and pedestrian crossing. That project could begin next month and be completed by the end of 2007.

The board also approved assistance, as follows, for neighborhood housing projects that are under way or on the drawing boards:

A $3.5 million plan by developer William J. Rogers for 56 new single-family homes in New Homestead's Gates Manor development received approval of a $900,000 URA loan and $290,000 grant.

In the wake of the razing of two housing complexes in East Liberty, the URA authorized exclusive negotiations with The Community Builders to undertake a retail-office project on the site of the former East Mall high-rise, and it altered financing arrangements to enable Liberty Park LP to proceed with construction of 124 mixed-income rental units at the former Liberty Park Apartments site.