When the first residents move into Tower Two at One Rincon Hill in the summer, nobody will be happier than Sam Habash.

The owner of Gabby's convenience store on Harrison Street has been waiting six years for the influx of residents who were supposed to turn Rincon Hill into San Francisco's most dense high-rise neighborhood. He's eager to sell falafel kebabs and six-packs of beer to the newcomers.

"I thought there would be all these new people coming up here," he said. "That is why I bought the store. It's been a big disappointment."

Back in 2006, San Francisco's Rincon Hill, a hilltop south of the Financial District near the approaches to the Bay Bridge, was a top target for luxury housing developers, a hotbed of speculative investment sparked by the Rincon Hill plan. That plan called for 2,200 housing units in the sort of tall, thin high-rises that Vancouver was said to have perfected.

But after the housing market collapsed in 2008, progress on Rincon Hill stopped. Several developers gave properties back to their lenders. No new restaurants have opened in the area since then, nor are there new parks or dry cleaners or even nail salons.

Now - finally - the neighborhood is coming alive. A total of 2,127 housing units are under construction on the hill, with towers rising at 399 Fremont St., 340 Fremont St., 333 Fremont St., 45 Lansing St., and 201 Spear St. Apartments in the second phase of One Rincon Hill have hit the market, with one-bedrooms starting at $3,300 a month and three-bedroom units at $9,900 a month.

Agents at one of the buildings nearing completion, 333 Fremont St., have also started writing leases. Both of those buildings open in the summer.

Plan bearing fruit

For developer Michael Kriozere, who led development of One Rincon Hill, the construction boom is vindication that the 2005 neighborhood plan was viable. Kriozere nearly lost the One Rincon Hill property to foreclosure during the recession, and he heard plenty of criticism from San Franciscans who felt the 60-story tower was excessively tall and out of place.

"I'm like the phoenix," he said. "A lot of people didn't survive through 2008. But we held on because it was a great piece of property."

Kriozere says the second 49-story tower complements the first building and that the additional five towers under construction will create a coherent composition.

"The city planners wanted this to be the apex of the hill - a signature building to designate Rincon Hill. That is exactly what has happened," he said.

For pioneers who bought early on Rincon Hill, the mind-blowing views have come with some disappointments. Besides Gabby's and the popular Local Restaurant and Wine Merchant at 330 First St., Rincon Hill is bereft of retail.

A sushi place that was supposed to open at 326 First St. fell through. Plans to convert the Sailors Union of the Pacific building at 450 Harrison St. into a marketplace with retail, restaurants and community arts space have stalled. Currently the union, which uses less than 25 percent of the 50,000-square-foot building, is leasing the space to all the contractors working on the Rincon Hill towers.

Gunnar Lundeberg, president of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, said he is happy to have the construction companies paying rent, but in the long run the union would like to inject new life into the building with shops, restaurants and other businesses. The 1950 building has a 2,000-seat auditorium that some developers have looked at for a movie theater.

"We are open to all kinds of ideas," he said. "We used to have a restaurant and bar in here, and we would like to do that again. We have one of the biggest auditoriums South of Market."

Jeff Handy, who owns Local Kitchen, said there are several empty storefronts on his block, but it's tough doing business on a steep hill that serves as the heavily trafficked funnel to the Bay Bridge. But he said residents in One Rincon Hill, as well as the Metropolitan condo tower on First Street, have been loyal.

"The locals kept us alive, even at the rock bottom," he said.

Eye-catching tower

In 2008, Google engineer Jim Meehan was subleasing a studio on Nob Hill when he looked out and saw a super-tall tower rising beyond the southern Financial District. "I looked across the city and thought, 'What is that thing?' It looked like a tall rocket ship had landed. It was One Rincon Hill."

Meehan bought a penthouse on the building's 59th floor, closing on the same day Lehman Bros. failed. "I thought, 'Oh my God, what have I got myself into?' " he said. "It was a nail-biting summer."

For three years, Meehan was the only resident on the 59th floor and had no neighbors on floors 58 or 60. "We had the lap pool to ourselves. We had extra parking for guests," he said.

While he credits management at One Rincon Hill with bringing residents together with parties and events, Meehan said the neighborhood lacks a focal point - a park or retail district to foster casual interaction. The closest children's playground is Sue Bierman Park on Drumm Street, near the Ferry Building.

"You can put a lot of people up here in tall buildings, but if you don't give them a place to hang out, it will be hard to construct a community," he said.

Inadequate transit

And even as Rincon Hill is on the verge of a population explosion, transit has gotten worse, not better. The 12-Folsom bus, which connected Rincon Hill to western SoMa and the Mission, was cut back in December 2009. The bus used to stop in front of One Rincon Hill; now it no longer goes east of Second Street, a long block west.

Jamie Whitaker, a Rincon Hill Neighborhood Association president who lives just east of One Rincon Hill at the Baycrest Towers, said the lack of transit turned Rincon Hill into "a bit of an island."

He said the lack of transit is especially hard on senior residents who have trouble traversing busy First Street near the Bay Bridge entrance. "If you want to go to Trader Joe's," he said, "it's two buses, maybe more."

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen