Preservationists and neighbors who have seen designs for hotelier Andre Balazs’s boutique hotel that will straddle the High Line in the meatpacking district have likened the 25-story glass and white brick tower to something one would find in Miami Beach or Las Vegas.

They are asking Mr. Balazs to scale back the designs – which have been shielded from the public thus far – but the hotelier is saying that it is too late to make changes.

The director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, and the local restaurant owner Florent Morellet, met with Mr. Balazs last week. Mr. Berman called the designs “nauseating.”

“It basically looks like a Las Vegas casino or an Atlantic City hotel dropped into the meatpacking district,” Mr. Berman said.”The design is about as far from contextual as you could imagine.”

Mr. Balazs, calling from Los Angeles, defended the designs that were drawn up by local architect, Polshek Partners. He said that he has met regularly with Mr. Berman and others about the project, and he was surprised at the attacks.

“We can’t alter the design. It’s in the ground. It is what it is,” he said. “I don’t know if there is a political agenda here that I’m not aware of.”

“There are no surprises in the design,” he said. “What we do is contextual projects.”

“The Standard, New York” is a 330-room hotel set to open by 2008, according to Mr. Balazs. The hotelier, a regular on Page Six, owns the Mercer Hotel and recently developed a luxury condominium project in the SoHo historical district called 40 Mercer Street. His boutique hotels in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles are popular celebrity hangouts.

The building site near Washington Street and West 13th Street has long served as a battleground between developers and neighborhood groups.

In 2002, developer Stephen Touhey proposed building a 45-story condominium on the site, designed by the renowned French architect Jean Nouvel. After outrage by neighborhood activists, including Mr. Berman and Mr. Morellet, Mr. Touhey refashioned his plans into a hotel. After more pressure, he sold out to Mr. Balazs in 2004 for $24 million.

In 2003, the city’s Landmarks and Preservation Commission designated a large swath of the low-rise, cobblestoned streets as the Gansevoort historic district. Even though that designation would have prevented Mr. Balazs’s current design, the site was excluded from the boundaries.

Mr. Balazs is under no obligation to change the designs because the planned building fits within existing city regulations.He said that he is “sad” about the pace of change in the area, much like the way that most boutiques have vacated SoHo because of its high rents. Mr. Balazs said that that he is heartened by the city’s decision to subsidize some of the remaining meatpacking businesses in the area.

Despite the city’s historic designation, Mr. Berman says that the meatpacking district is still facing a “host of issues” stemming from a rapid transition, skyrocketing rents, and the city’s most crowded nightlife scene.

“There are efforts underway to bring the neighborhood back to a balance, an even keel, to keep it from becoming this B&T nightlife Disneyland,” Mr. Berman said.”We fear this hotel will only add to this problem.”