“This is the tipping point for Gowanus,” said Jerome Krase, a professor emeritus of sociology at Brooklyn College and a former president of the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation, a neighborhood group. “What’s going to be interesting is to see whether it’s going to contribute to a kind of middle- and upper-middle-income neighborhood in between gentrified Carroll Gardens and highly gentrified Park Slope. What’s unusual about this project is it’s being done in the middle of the wasteland.”

Nevertheless, those who live and work there — many of the old industrial buildings are filled with artists’ studios — worry that they are seeing the neighborhood they took a chance on become a dreaded “destination” that, like SoHo and Dumbo, will forever homogenize its quirky and rough-edged character.

“The project will bring in people, but it will eliminate people — people making pottery, stained glass, woodworkers,” said Linda Mariano, who has lived in a brick row house in Gowanus with her husband since 1974.

The proposed developments coincide with the federal designation of the canal as a Superfund site and the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to dredge the toxic canal bottom and cap it with clay, sand and rocks, work that could take until the end of the decade or beyond. While that cleanup, some major sewage work by the city and the pumping of clean water into the canal will eventually improve the water quality, a lingering question is whether prospective tenants would want to move into buildings that might overlook the work area and overhear the roar and clatter of dredging machinery.