ALBANY — And you thought closing on the sale of your house was complicated. Try buying, say, Empire State Plaza.

In 2004, the state's 40-year lease on the $985 million, 98½-acre downtown government nerve center and monument to Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller ended.

But nearly eight years later, the state still doesn't technically own it.

Albany County — the state's landlord by way of a deft financing scheme devised in part by former Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd — still holds title to the property.

The transfer, which could be approved by county lawmakers as soon as next month, essentially amounts to a procedural coda to the biggest construction project in the city's history and an ambitious bid to remake its skyline forever.

In addition to The Egg performing arts center, the Plaza — originally known as the South Mall — houses thousands of state workers in four, 23-story agency buildings and the 44-floor Corning Tower, the tallest skyscraper in the state outside New York City.

The delay in transferring ownership, according to the county, was caused by extensive survey work that needed to be done to correctly delineate the boundaries of the massive complex, which stretches roughly from Swan Street in the west to Eagle Street to the east, and from Madison Avenue to the south to State Street to the north.

That work was expected to take a long time, said county spokeswoman Mary Rozak. But it hit a speed bump when one of the people centrally involved in it at the state Office of General Services retired, Rozak said.

"What would ordinarily take a period of time anyway," she said, "suddenly takes even longer."

Heather Groll, an OGS spokeswoman, said numerous parcels of land, including the land for Times Union Center, have been added and subtracted from the agreement over the years.

Each of those changes, Groll said, needed to be reviewed and approved by OGS, the attorney general's office and the county before the final transfer could be completed.

Assemblyman Jack McEneny, one of the city's most devoted historians and an unabashed fan of the megalithic marble complex, offered another theory for the delay.

"It's just an oversight, plain and simple," said McEneny, a former Corning aide who is retiring after having represented the city in the Capitol for two decades. "It's obvious why nobody cared — because nobody was paying anybody any money in the meantime."

Specifically, the pact between the county and state included a clause that capped any payments by the state at the costs of the borrowing to build the plaza, meaning the state has essentially been occupying the complex rent free — save for the costs of the upkeep — since those bonds were paid, Rozak said.

"Under the terms of the deal, all New York state owed was to pay off the entire debt of the project, and it was explicitly outlined in the deal that that would be it," she said.

How the county came to own the South Mall to begin with is one of the richest political chapters in the city's history.

Rockefeller, a Republican, first proposed the mammoth construction project in 1962 with little notice to Corning, the city's longtime Democratic mayor with whom he had an often frosty relationship.

At first, Corning branded the project a "sterile monument" as he sought to block the state from condemning a teaming middle-class neighborhood and displacing as many as 7,000 people — most of them Democrats on whom Corning's Democratic machine relied.

The mayor, however, eventually warmed to the idea and is credited with helping devise the financing plan, under which Albany County agreed to issue the bonds to build it — allowing Rockefeller to sidestep skeptical downstate voters in a statewide referendum — and become the landlord. Without that maneuver, the project would have never happened, McEneny said.

"The reason why we had the Mall is because Erastus Corning came up with a gimmick, if you will," he said.

Initially estimated to cost $400 million, the South Mall's price tag swelled to $985 million. The total cost, interest included, is said to have been about $2 billion.

John Kearney, of Colonie, lived at 262 Madison Ave. — roughly the spot of what is now the west entrance to the State Museum — and watched from the school bus each day as his former neighborhood was dismantled house by house. Soon, he said, the booming sound of pile-driving would fill the air, reaching where he sat at nearby Cardinal McCloskey High School.

"Initially when we were kids, everybody in the neighborhood thought it was a bad thing. It just destroyed an entire neighborhood — an extended family, so to speak," Kearney said. "But in the long run, relative to the economy and what took place later on, it was a good thing."

While some have remained critical of the project and its toll on the city's fabric, longtime OGS Commissioner John C. Egan, who was involved in the construction, said there is no question in his mind it was a force for good. And while the title transfer may be little more than paperwork shuffle, Egan said it offers a moment for reflection.

"The whole thing, when you look at what it meant to the area and to the people — the museum alone, the performing arts center, The Egg, the convention center," he said. "I think it's routine, but I do think it's good to every once in while to take a step back and say, 'Was it worth it?' And I think from my perspective it was immensely important for the community and the entire area."

jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com • 518-454-5445 • @JCEvangelist_TU