New residential development came to LoDo, transforming old warehouses into pricey new lofts.

For some residents, half a lifetime has come and gone as they have sought to transform abandoned lots, truck graveyards and warehouses along the waterway.

The two developers have already transformed several old warehouses in Greektown into a lively nightspot, with a hotel, several restaurants and a small design center.

It is holding the after-party for Omniart, an "urban intervention" that will transform vacant lots and warehouses into settings for cutting-edge art on NE 13th Street.

But now an uneasy calm exists between about a dozen homeless people, mostly men, and gallery owners, who are transforming empty former garages and warehouses into upscale galleries that rival established businesses in SoHo and midtown.

Developers are transforming several former light manufacturing buildings and warehouses in SoHo into luxury condominium lofts.

In such highly effective conversions as the Dia Center for the Arts (1987, with additions in 1992 and 1997) in New York and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh (1994), Gluckman excels in transforming disused warehouses or industrial buildings into handsomely proportioned, easily accessible, well-lighted and flexible display space.

Unemployment has dropped, city officials have managed to transform several abandoned warehouses and factories into shopping complexes and modest housing developments, and immigrants from the West Indies and South and Central America have given new vitality to shops and neighborhoods that were all but abandoned during Elizabeth's darkest days in the late 1980s.

And then there are those who are simply wary of anything borne by Mr. Walentas, who has been the main force in creating something of a new SoHo, transforming warehouses into luxury apartments and bringing a hip commercial cachet to the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn.