Two plans are being floated that would put curbs on development in one of the city’s great success stories of the last decade, the Lower East Side, where substandard tenement housing and high crime rates have been replaced by residential development and a thriving restaurant and nightlife industry.

Today, representatives from the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street will meet with officials from the Department of Planning to discuss their proposal for a sweeping historic district designation on the Lower East Side.

The preliminary boundaries of that district would cover roughly the area between Houston Street on the north and Division Street on the south; Allen Street on the west and Essex Street on the east. Most of the area, which comprises more than 600 acres and contains in excess of 400 buildings, has been recognized on the National Register of Historic Places since 2000.

With the city’s population expected to continue to grow, some think a historic designation would stifle market driven growth. A professor of urban planning at New York University, Mitchell Moss, called a historic district designation “hostile to the young people of New York City by limiting their opportunities to live there.

“This area is gradually blossoming with young people, new eateries, and the like, and this will turn it into a tourist trap rather than a genuine, authentic community,” Mr. Moss said. “It’s a historically inaccurate proposal. It’s an effort to return to the 19th century rather than maintaining what’s currently there.”

The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is reviewing the Tenement Museum’s request for historic district designation. In the city’s 84 historic districts, all existing buildings are designated as landmarks and face increased restrictions on development that require owners to get special permits from the city before they proceed with any work.

Concurrently, the city’s Department of Planning is conducting a study on the idea of protecting the neighborhood’s character by rezoning parts of the Lower East Side and the East Village. Planning officials are hoping to move a plan forward in the next year.

Any finalized plan to limit development in one of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, which already has soaring rents and property values, would face formidable opposition from property owners who may be interested in demolishing their tenement buildings and rebuilding.

Last week, Forbes magazine named the Lower East Side as the fourth best neighborhood in the nation in which to buy real estate, saying it showed a price appreciation of nearly 125% between 2003 and 2005.

The executive director of the Lower East Side Business Improvement District, Joseph Cunin, said his organization has yet to take an official position on any plan, but informal conversations with property owners indicate that a historic districting proposal is unlikely to generate much enthusiasm.

“We are seeing a lot of new restaurants, new retail, a lot of condo construction, conversions, renovations – everything that would go with a neighborhood that is booming is happening here,” Mr. Cunin said. “I think the biggest concern among property owners is that this would limit their ability to redevelop their properties and increase the potential cost of renovating their buildings.”

Mr. Cunin said property owners probably would prefer a rezoning to a historic district designation because it would place fewer restrictions on upgrading existing buildings.

He said stark signs of change appear almost daily in the neighborhood. In January, the roof of First Roumanian-American Synagogue on Rivington Street, built as a church in 1857, partially collapsed, leading to its demolition. As noted yesterday on the Web log Curbed, a real estate broker is now listing the site “as prime for development” at $15.3 million.

Several parties that seek to preserve the area’s historic character cited two recent developments that they say are completely out of place: The Hotel on Rivington, a boutique hotel that opened last year, and Blue, a luxury condominium tower featuring pixilated blue windows now rising on Norfolk Street.

The executive director of the Historic District Council, Simeon Bankoff, said his organization favors historic designation. He said the area is filled with valuable New York history and contains dozens of examples of late 19th century tenement-style buildings that retain unique architectural character, including terra cotta friezes, cornices, and original ironwork.

“The goal would be to have anyone whose parents and grandparents passed through the area to be able to come back and say, ‘That’s the building my relatives came through,'” Mr. Bankoff said. “You don’t want to them to say, ‘This is where my relatives came through when they came to New York, and now it is a 25-story glass tower.'”

Tomorrow, officials from the Tenement Museum, which is dedicated to preserving the stories of the waves of immigrants that have moved through the area, will hold an “informational meeting” with a Community Board 3 committee to discuss the ramifications of a possible historic district designation.

Two representatives from the Tenement Museum, Katherine Snider and Margaret Hughes, said yesterday in a telephone interview that they are meeting with community groups to discuss concerns about development and the potential ramifications of landmarking. In early April, they will meet with landlords from the area. Ms. Snider and Ms. Hughes insisted that the plan is in its “very, very early stages.”

“The Tenement Museum is concerned about pressure on the neighborhood. Our role is to serve as the town hall for these issues, to talk about how we could possibly address these issues,” Ms. Hughes said.

Should Landmarks decide to move forward with the proposal, it would first conduct a study of the area. To become law, any designation also would require approval by both the Department of Planning and the City Council.