Grails will not run Grails application

[MikeTempleman]

I keep seeing a "[project name] does not appear to be part of a Grails application"

Envirnonment: Ubuntu 11.10, STS 2.9.1, Grails 2.0.3

Downloaded a medium sized project from github, imported, refreshed, checked dependencies, and tried to run.

Attempted fixes:
ran grails upgrade. Same result
ran grails clean. Same result
quit STS, started again, refreshed dependencies. Same result
Folder structure matches legal grails folders, I believe. grails-app is in top level folder.

Any suggestions? I have spent 3-4 hours on this with no result.

Update: from what I can gather from Grails.org (http://grails.org/Checking+Projects+into+SVN) it sounds like 'grails upgrade' should recreate or reset all files so that grails recognizes a project.

Update: oops, this really should be in the Grails forum. Should I repost or should a mod move it?