The Pointe, as the building is known, has 57 units selling for approximately $500 a square foot, half the cost of space in a similar property in many parts of Manhattan. Yet logic is often defied when it comes to the city’s often-neglected but fastest-growing borough, which will soon be home to a renaissance of sorts, if Leib Puretz’s plans are realized.

The Brooklyn-based developer is building seven new projects — with some 600 condos and a number of spaces for retail stores and restaurants — in St. George, the urban neighborhood abutting the newly renovated Staten Island ferry terminal. Mr. Puretz is betting that the new buildings will attract young professionals priced out of Manhattan and DUMBO.

But sales have been lukewarm at the Pointe, the first of the new developments to be completed, with just more than one-third of the units sold since they came on the market last year. And the current market downturn may prove to be yet another impediment to the rejuvenation Staten Islanders have long hoped for.

“Staten Island is one of the areas that would be one of the first hit boroughs in the event of a slowdown,” the managing director of the Prudential Douglas Elliman Development Marketing Group, Andrew Gerringer, said. He added that the island, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and most of Queens are more likely to be affected by a possible recession than Manhattan and popular neighborhoods such as Long Island City, where some developments have continued to sell between 10 and 15 units a month despite the present slump.

While the development of St. George is possible, Mr. Gerringer said, it likely won’t happen until fast-growing neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx have been maxed out. “It’s going to take some time,” he said.

Community organizers have tried for years to revitalize St. George. Now home to a few restaurants and small retail shops, including used clothing stores, psychics, and one shop selling adult items, the area has long been avoided by affluent Staten Islanders in favor of more suburban neighborhoods. But the time may finally be right for the area: The ferry terminals at St. George and Whitehall were renovated in 2005, while a memorial to the victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001, a new park, and the Staten Island Yankees’ minor league ballpark enliven the waterfront.

Mr. Puretz, who declined to be interviewed for this article, owns and manages a number of apartment buildings in the New York metropolitan area. He visited St. George because his son lives on Staten Island, Mr. Puretz’s project manager, Joseph Margolis, said. “He saw the view,” Mr. Margolis said. “He said, ‘How come nobody has developed this?'”

Robert Fitzsimmons, of St. George’s Gateway Arms Realty Corp., said the critical housing density of Mr. Puretz’s developments will help support nightlife and retail in the area. “Come 5, 6 o’clock, we’ve been a little desolate,” the broker said.

“He’s really put himself on the line,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said of the developer. “Thank God someone did.”

James Prendamano, a salesman for Mr. Puretz’s exclusive broker in Staten Island, Casandra Properties, said he remains optimistic about sales at the Pointe, which will have a Walgreens pharmacy on the ground floor and a restaurant next door. “Is it what it was five years ago? Of course not,” he said. “But considering the slowdown, we consider ourselves way ahead of the curve.”

Other factors apart from the housing slowdown may prevent Staten Island from reaching its potential, however. In particular, the island is known for its transportation woes — commutes as long as three hours, a single subway line that covers only a small sliver of the island, and some of the worst traffic in the five boroughs.

“We don’t have what the other boroughs have in terms of mass transit,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said. “It’s something we’re working on.”

Casandra’s brokers said they view the free 25-minute ferry ride, a short walk from all of Mr. Puretz’s developments, as a selling point. But ferries only depart every 15 minutes during rush hour, every 30 minutes during the day, and once an hour at night. Attempts to increase the number of ferries have failed.

“It’s not the most convenient place to get to,” Mr. Gerringer said of Staten Island. When it comes to real estate, he said, the perception that a neighborhood is unhip can change overnight, but transportation issues are more intractable. “When people are moving to outer boroughs, it becomes about transportation,” he said. “Prices get lower as you get further out.”

Some Staten Island residents do not seem convinced that St. George will change much in the near future. A retired New Springville resident, Mike Lula, said he wasn’t impressed with what he saw while house-hunting with his family on Sunday at an open house for the Pointe.

“It’s a nice building, but it’s right on the boulevard,” he said. The Pointe’s prices are too high for the neighborhood, he said, adding that it will be a long time before St. George will improve.

Rosanna Jimenez, on the other hand, “fell in love” with the Pointe when she first saw it last April. She and her husband considered apartments in the West 90s and Jersey City before putting a down payment on a 1,200-square-foot apartment in the Pointe that has views of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from the bedroom window. “It’s so close to the city — it’s like buying in downtown Manhattan,” Ms. Jimenezsaid, who is she’s confident that the property’s value will increase. “I think it’s going to be very attractive for people in the Wall Street area.”

A sprawling two-bedroom condominium in a luxury doorman building has two full baths and a balcony yielding expansive views of New York Harbor, and it is selling for $565,000. One might think that units in such a building, which is 25 minutes from downtown Manhattan, would sell like hotcakes. But there’s a catch: It’s in Staten Island.