The Colorado Economic Development Commission unanimously agreed to give Colorado Springs an extra year to meet the “substantial work” requirement for two of four ongoing City for Champions projects.

City officials and their partners requested an extension last month because physical work had not yet begun on the sports and events center, split between two downtown locations, and the new Air Force Academy visitors center. Both projects had until Dec. 16 of this year to meet the “substantial work” deadline to retain millions in state sales tax rebates over 30 years.

But now that date has shifted to 2019 and the city has another year to begin work after the commission approved the extension request Thursday morning in Denver.

The vote was needed Thursday said Jeff Kraft, who directs the commission’s Division of Business Funding and Incentives, because the looming deadline had created uncertainty surrounding the projects in Colorado Springs.

“The sooner we can approve this we can alleviate that doubt and allow them to move forward on their projects,” Kraft told the commission.

Then, after just a few minutes of conversation, the entire board agreed to the extension.

“Unanimous,” Bob Cope, Colorado Springs’ economic development officer, said with a smile and a nod.

Cope said the vote didn’t surprise him, “but it’s still good to have.”

With that extension, the commission will meet again with city staff next month to discuss specifically what must be done to meet the “substantial work” deadline.

Cope estimated after the vote that the requirement will likely involve physical construction, which can likely begin by next summer.

The other two projects slated for the total $120.5 million in state funding are expected to meet this year’s deadline. The Olympic Museum is already under construction and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs broke ground last month for the sports medicine and performance center planned there.

The sports and events center project was considered dead in the water a year ago and the $28 million in state financing was assumed lost. But Cope alongside Mayor John Suthers and others unveiled plans to resurrect the project this summer.

The first part of that project is a 10,000-seat sports center is a stadium for the Switchbacks minor league soccer team at CityGate, a vacant block southwest of Cimarron and Sahwatch streets. That stadium would be accompanied by a seven-story building to the south with hundreds of apartments and businesses. The second part is a 3,000-seat indoor arena built on the south side of Colorado College’s campus, which will serve as the new home for the men’s ice hockey team.

The stadium and arena are meant to bookend downtown from north to south and infuse the blocks in between with cash and out-of-state visitors.

Nick Ragain, co-owner and president of the Switchbacks, and a representative of Weidner Apartments, the Seattle company investing $40 million for the apartments and mixed-use space, were also present at the Thursday morning meeting and said they were pleased with the extension.

Although the city and its partners have until December 2019 to complete “substantial work,” those present at the meeting said they have no plans to wait that long to meet whatever requirements the commission sets for the projects.

Carrie Schiff, the chairwoman of the commission’s board of directors, called Colorado Springs’ projects “really amazing” and said they exemplified what the state funding program set out to accomplish.

Cope also gave the commission a brief update on the remaining two City for Champions projects. The Olympic Museum is about 60 percent complete by now and crews are shifting into the final design phase, installing exhibits and technology for the building, he said.

And construction will begin on the sports medicine and events center at UCCS in January, Cope said. The project is expected to open to the public around April 2020.