“Everyone would dig through those bins, and you never knew what beautiful things you’d come away with,” said Anne Peckham, a devotee whose relationship with Filene’s was like Holly Golightly’s with Tiffany’s. “If you had a tough day, there was nothing that would brighten it more than going down to the Basement.”

Tempers erupted here last month when one of the project’s developers, Vornado Realty Trust, based in New York, won approval to build a skyscraper there that will rival the Empire State Building in height. Mayor Thomas M. Menino threatened to revoke building permits for the Boston site if construction did not resume this month. “It shows arrogance on their part,” he said. “They could care less about Boston, and that bothers me to no end.”

A similar situation played out in New York in the 1990s, when Vornado let the former Alexander’s department store on Lexington Avenue sit vacant and blighted for years. Mr. Menino invoked Alexander’s in an angry letter to Vornado executives, accusing them of “a consistent policy of indifference.”

Bud Perrone, a spokesman for Vornado, declined to comment, as did Marcy Syms, whose company, the Syms Corporation, now owns Filene’s Basement.

In a letter to the city last month, Sandeep Mathrani, an executive vice president of Vornado, wrote that it was still seeking “a suitable solution for the site that can be financed and meet the city’s goals for the area.” But the letter, which was also signed by John B. Hynes III, a co-developer, offered no timeline.

There are now 27 other Filene’s Basement stores in nine states and Washington, including one in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. But none hold the cachet of the original 1909 downtown store. Susan Edbril, a psychologist whose grandmother worked at Filene’s for almost 40 years, said the demolition did not seem so bad when a new version of the store was expected within a few years. “People didn’t have a chance to say goodbye or to grieve,” Dr. Edbril said, “because they thought it was going to be there again.”