New York, NY —

In the Spring our Main Street NYC series traveled along the Bowery, checking in on the health of local businesses and institutions. We visited the Bowery Mission; a decades-old pizza supply shop; and a new eco-friendly home goods store, the Green Depot.

We ended our trip at 250 Bowery, a huge hole where a luxury hotel was supposed to go up. Back in March, site manager Joesef Ayoub said that the problem with the project, was financing:

AYOUB: We are trying to re-evaluate the budget and give them new budgets so we'll get re-approved for the loan.

REPORTER: Its building permits expired in April, and the site remains empty. But that’s not the only hotel project changing life along the Bowery. WNYC’s Brigid Bergin checks in on this Main Street, and the tension over development.

REPORTER: This is Roberta Degnore’s first trip to the Bowery in over a year.

DEGNORE: It’s good to be down here. I’d almost forgotten how crowded it’s gotten. How touristy.

REPORTER: She unlocks her bike from outside Whole Foods on Houston Street and lights up an American Spirit cigarette. We’re going to walk down to her old block, on the east side of the Bowery north of Delancey Street.

DEGNORE: It’s weird. I’m oddly numb I think. I know I complained, about oh my god, I don’t want to go back down there but, it hurts. But in a way, time really does heal, a bit.

REPORTER: Degnore lived for 30 years in a 1,500 square foot loft at 187 Bowery, a five-story building with a restaurant supply store on the first floor.

DEGNORE: Those are my windows up there. My curtains are still hanging.

REPORTER:She has one of those classic New York stories – Degnore came to New York in her 20s. She’s a writer and filmmaker. She lived with a sculptor, and photographer. They converted a huge commercial space themselves. It had mice. It leaked and Degnore loved it.

DEGNORE: That's really true. I made a choice to be on the edge at the time when I got this loft

REPORTER: The Bowery has been Degnore's Main Street - from its gritty, punk rock days in 1970's - to the latest wave of luxury condos and high end grocers, like Whole Foods. And as that development wave hit its crest Degnore found herself caught in the undertow.

In the summer of 2008, her landlord sold the building for over $7.5 million to Brack Capital Real Estate. Degnore tried fighting. She was the last tenant to holdout. Then her dog died. And she gave in - agreeing to leave her home in exchange for a financial settlement, which she didn’t disclose.

DEGNORE: I had no future anymore. I had to become unattached. I left my washer, dryer, the plants outside.

REPORTER: Now, over a year later, scaffolding stands in front of her old building. But there’s no hotel, and no construction going on. Brack Capital Real Estate still lists a project for this address on their website.

They describe it as a boutique hotel…with quote “spectacular views of Soho," which means, they were planning to build pretty high. But now the project appears to be stalled, and no one from the company returned repeated calls for comment about its status.

John Fox is an analyst with PFK Hospitality Research here in New York. He says while hotel development is a 2–3 year process.

FOX: In general, if they aren’t already started, they’re at best long, long delayed because financing just isn’t available and I can’t conceive anyone who would start one today.

REPORTER: Fox says before the downturn, industry experts were forecasting a potential for 20,000 new hotel rooms in Manhattan between 2008-2010. Although he says even in the good times those numbers seemed like a stretch.

FOX: Some of those were just a gleam in the eye of a developer.

REPORTER: He says now those numbers have been cut in half, because the money to build them just isn’t there. And while that’s bad news for developers some local residents see this slowdown as their chance. An opportunity to create some public policy that might put the brakes on a development trend they say threatens the character of the neighborhood – and the Main Street the travel everyday. David Mulkins lives just off the Bowery on East 5th Street.

MULKINS: I guess it was about 3 or 4 years ago we found out that a 22-story luxury hotel was going up right next store to 3-story old, historic buildings.

REPORTER: That‘s the Cooper Square Hotel. Mulkins says it doesn't fit the scale of the neighborhood. And it was because of it's construction that he and others formed the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, or BAN, a grassroots preservation organization.

The Cooper Square Hotel is located on the East side of the Bowery. And it's actually 21-stories tall. On the West side of the street things are different. The low-rise character is still largely in tact, and the folks from BAN wanted to understand the difference.

DEITHER: They wanted to know how come my side of the Bowery didn't have the problems you have on this side of the Bowery and I said, because we rezoned ours.

REPORTER: Doris Deither has been helping to rezone the city since the 1960s.

DEITHER: I just had my 80th birthday party. 147 people showed up.

REPORTER: She worked with Jane Jacobs in the West Village. And she helped create two special districts on the west side of the Bowery - the Noho and Little Italy historic districts. They include height caps and provisions to save historically significant buildings. So BAN brought her on to help them with a plan for the East side of the street.

DEITHER: I tell them what to do and they send people out to do it. That’s one advantage of being a consultant instead of part of the group.

REPORTER: Deither has helped develop a new zoning proposal for the east side of the Bowery. It would limit the height of the buildings to 85 feet, or eight stories, and it would protect buildings of special significance from demolition.

The plan has support from local elected officials. City Planning says its aware of the community’s concerns, and its committed to meeting with local residents to hear their proposed solutions.

In the mean time, people like Roberta Degnore are holding out hope that things don’t just slow down.

DEGNORE: My fantasy is that they won’t be able to build here. Things are changing while the economy is down and new zoning will come in and I’ll be able to go back into my space. That’s my dream. That would be great. That would be just great.

REPORTER: A new hotel is going up at 91 Bowery in Chinatown. The construction there so destabilized the neighboring buildings that they had to be demolished. Twenty-nine residents and a local restaurant were turned out on the street. Many of the residents were Chinese immigrants and their families, who had lived in the building for generations. Unlike Degnore, they received nothing from their landlord. For WNYC, I’m Brigid Bergin.

For photos of the Bowery visit our news blog.