Preservationists opposed to a Donald Trump condo-hotel hybrid have struck out with the city, which rejected their request to revoke his permit.

The 46-story Trump SoHo, planned for lower Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, has been controversial since Mr. Trump announced it on his reality television show, “The Apprentice,” last year.

“Every other developer comes to us and says, ‘We’re going to build a building. What do you think of it?'” a director of the SoHo Alliance, a group that seeks to maintain the character of the artsy neighborhood, Sean Sweeney, said. “Trump didn’t come to the community. People in California heard about it before people in SoHo did.”

The new building, on Spring Street near the Holland Tunnel, will dwarf the surrounding 10- to 15-story structures. But its height is permitted under the zoning of the former parking lot where it is now under construction.

What is not permitted is a residential use, so the new Trump tower must be packaged as a hotel and not as a condo building. But in a deal negotiated by city officials, the hotel rooms will be bought like condos.

“He’s calling it a hotel but it’s really going to be a building primarily for residential use,” Mr. Sweeney said today.

Under the project’s so-called restrictive declaration, no owner will be able to occupy a unit for a continuous period of more than 29 days in any 36-day period or for more than 120 days in a calendar year.

A SoHo Alliance attorney, Stuart Klein, asked the city Department of Buildings to revoke the building’s permit in a July 24 letter.

Mr. Klein, formerly the top lawyer with the Department of Buildings, said the 29-out-of-36-days rule would be unenforceable.

“It sets up a mechanism that’s simply not going to be followed,” he said today.

Mr. Klein also argued in his letter that the building’s plans should be reviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission because the units have been marketed as investments.

In a reply dated August 14, a department general counsel, Mona Sehgal, rejected Mr. Klein’s arguments and said the building could go forward as planned.

A department spokeswoman, Robin Brooks, said the permit “was issued properly and, as such, the buildings department is not revoking that permit.”

A spokeswoman for the Trump SoHo referred calls to a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Julius Schwarz, who was not available today.

Mr. Klein said his next step would be to appeal the Department of Buildings’ decision to the city Board of Standards and Appeals. If that appeal fails, the SoHo Alliance can file a lawsuit in state Supreme Court seeking to pull the building permit.

Mr. Sweeney said he fears that once Mr. Trump’s building is completed, other developers will rush to fill the once gritty neighborhood with condo towers.

“If he gets away with it,” Mr. Sweeney warned, “there’ll be a tsunami of residential buildings.”