The cachet of Fifth Avenue has been moving steadily northward, prompting enthusiasm from developers but apprehension from some Central Harlem residents.

Nearly three years after a luxury building, 1400 on Fifth, opened on East 116th Street, two more high-end condominiums will be ready for occupancy on upper Fifth Avenue early next year.

Some units in the new buildings are selling for well over $1 million — a relative deal for Fifth Avenue, where some apartments further south command eight figures.

Rhapsody on Fifth, on the corner of East 127th Street, is a doorman building where all of the 22 units feature bamboo flooring, marble bathrooms, and granite countertops in the kitchen. Many of the apartments have private terraces. One-bedroom units start at $620,000; two-bedrooms start at $850,000. The most expensive unit, a two-bedroom penthouse with a private terrace, goes for $1.55 million. About half of the units have been sold.

Kalahari, a much larger development at East 116th Street, has a round-the-clock concierge, and units feature bamboo floors, highend bathroom and kitchen finishes, and large picture windows. The building will have 129 market-rate apartments, with almost as many set aside by lottery for low- and middle-income buyers.

Nearly 60% of the market-rate units at Kalahari have been sold. The least expensive apartment still available, a two-bedroom unit, is on the market for $680,000. Prices go up to $1.36 million for a four-bedroom duplex.

The building, which has a façade adorned with African-themed designs, also features a screening room, where the works of African-American filmmakers will be shown, an agent for the Marketing Directors, which represents both buildings, Monica Klingenberg, said.

Rhapsody, and to a lesser extent Kalahari, have played up the Fifth Avenue location in their marketing. “Fifth Avenue just connotes a certain level of luxury and a certain expectation of high-end, and people even in Harlem like the idea of a Fifth Avenue address,” Ms. Klingenberg said. “I think everyone aspires to that address, whether it’s on 70th Street or whether it’s on 125th Street.” When 1400 on Fifth hit the market several years back, it too was marketed as “a stylish Fifth Avenue address.”

“With the whole renaissance that’s gone on in Harlem, it’s a palatable address even above the Upper East Side,” Ms. Klingenberg said.

An agent at Corcoran Group Real Estate’s Harlem office, David Daniels, said the trend toward luxury development along Fifth Avenue would continue: “Up until maybe 135th, mostly anything new is going to be luxury.”

“There are people who want to be in what they perceive to be an edgier neighborhood,” Ms. Klingenberg said, comparing the area to pre-gentrification SoHo. “Harlem has that edge and people like it. They like the idea of living in a mixed community.”

Some central Harlem residents see the luxury developments more ominously, and fear the influx of wealthy residents will destroy the very neighborhood that draws them. They note that the cost of housing in the area is already rapidly rising.

The director of the Harlem Tenants Council, Nellie Bailey, said marketing to luxury tenants was “callous.” “‘Edgy’ is just the substitute for a poor, working-class neighborhood that’s changing,” she said.

Ms. Bailey said long-time Harlem residents are now “being told this is the last frontier in New York City and we’re here to conquer the last frontier, and Fifth Avenue is going to become the Fifth Avenue of the East Side.”

“What they’re doing to this community is horrible,” a community liaison for the 116th Street Block Association, Martha Ramos, said. “Nobody can get an apartment, everything is overpriced.”

“I see a lot of white people coming in clumps from the subway stations to go to their apartments at Fifth Avenue and 116th Street,” she said, “We’re not racist. There’s not a problem with having other cultures come in. But the whole thing is that the prices are going too high, and it looks like they’re trying to get us out and move in everybody from downtown.”

The chairman of Community Board 10, which represents Central Harlem, Neal Clark, said the neighborhood “is starting to feel like Midtown,” with taller buildings and more affluent residents. “I’m looking for an apartment outside of Harlem,” he said. “I can’t afford to be up in here.”

Mr. Clark added, “I guess it is a renaissance, but what I’m saying is it doesn’t benefit the people who have been here through the hard times.”

The construction of luxury residences has also attracted higher-end retailers to the area.

A managing partner at Massey Knakal Realty Services, Shimon Shkury, said he had seen a dramatic increase in retail rents along Fifth Avenue and other major avenues in Harlem.

He said he expected to see more service businesses and national chains moving into the area over the next year or two.

Mr. Shkury said he has heard, but could not confirm, that Bed Bath & Beyond, Bloomingdales, and Macy ‘s were considering moving into a space on 125th Street between Lenox and Fifth avenues. “I think that the buyers for these condos would need the restaurants, would need the shopping centers, and I think that’s also going to be lucrative for the businesses themselves,” he said, “These are people who are big consumers.” Bloomingdales declined to comment on any possible move, and the other two retailers did not respond by press time.

Ms. Ramos said that business owners, like residential landlords, have raised prices beyond the reach of many long-time Harlemites. “There’s more people with money, more people with better jobs that are moving in, and I guess a lot of the stores have gotten wind of this.” But for now, she said,