PROVIDENCE — A local developer is proposing a 33-story luxury condominium tower on Federal Hill with up to 180 units, but the $80-million project will need numerous approvals and could be four to five years away in the best-case scenario.

When completed, the tower would be one of the city’s tallest buildings, and the only skyscraper outside the city’s downtown area. At 330 feet high, it would be twice the size of the Dominica Manor building next door, and roughly equal to the tower under construction at the Westin Providence hotel.

It would have a five-level, 350-space parking garage immediately next door, with two of the five levels underground.

The fact that the project is years away will work to its advantage, said Anthony J. Bucci Jr., a lawyer for Cranston developer Frank Zammiello and his brother, Michael.

The condo market will have absorbed the condominiums coming on line in Waterplace Park, at the Westin hotel and elsewhere, and will be ready for more.

“Those projects will probably already be absorbed into the market by the time our project comes on line,” Bucci said. “We will be selling into a different market by the time our project comes on line.”

The tower would be erected literally on top of two city streets, Federal Street and Bradford Street, which sit between Atwells Avenue and Broadway, close to Route 95.

The building would require that Bradford Street be chopped up and north-south routes on Federal Hill changed. But Federal Street would continue to run undisturbed — an arch would be carved out of the center of the building, allowing traffic on Federal Street to pass through.

For the project to succeed, it would require that the city approve the abandonment of Bradford Street and that the city give up its air rights over Federal Street. The City Council’s Public Works Committee will hear the developer’s arguments for those changes tonight at 7.

The project is the brainchild of Frank Zammiello, who rose from a start as an Olneyville electrician to head a powerful real estate company and now splits his time between Providence and Florida. Zammiello has developed the Bridlewood Estates in Lincoln and a 438-unit condo project in Highland Beach, Fla., among others, and owns Northstar Aviation Fueling, at T.F. Green Airport.

In 1986, Zammiello and his family pledged more than $6 million to secure a pretrial release for New England mob boss Raymond J. “Junior” Patriarca, when he was facing racketeering charges. Zammiello and Patriarca had worked together on real estate deals.

Zammiello also owns Camille’s restaurant, formerly Camille’s Roman Garden, which he purchased in 2001.

Camille’s parking lot would be used for the building’s footprint, as would a parking lot at the southeast corner of Bradford Street and Federal Street.

But the developer still needs to secure part of the Dominica Manor’s parking lot for the plan to move forward. The housing complex for the elderly would lose 33 parking spaces as a result of the land transfer. Zammiello has offered Dominica Manor, which is owned by the Providence Housing Authority, 50 spaces in the proposed parking garage, as well as a cash payment, in exchange for the land.

“We made them a proposal. We think it’s a better-than-even swap,” Bucci said.

If the land is acquired, and assuming that he can get the air rights and the street abandonment from the city, the developer will need zoning approvals for height and density.

Several neighborhood groups are opposing the tower, worried about its height and effect on the neighborhood, while other advocacy groups are opposed to the abandonment of Bradford Street at this early a stage in the process.

“It would open the floodgates to more extremely tall and massive buildings that would tower over and shade out the existing buildings and, over time, completely change the character of our neighborhood from one that is walkable and human scale to the scale of major high-rise cities like New York,” wrote Kari Lang, director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association, in an e-mail circulated to encourage opposition to the project.

Jef Nickerson, president of Greater City: Providence, a group that promotes dense, walkable and affordable development in Providence, questioned whether the city should abandon Bradford Street when the project has so many steps ahead.

“I don’t really think it has much chance of happening, and the City Council is moving a little fast on a project that may not happen,” he said.

Nickerson and others have questioned whether the street abandonment is allowed under the city’s existing Comprehensive Plan, and whether the City Council’s ordinance committee acted correctly when it gave an early approval to the abandonment last month without waiting for a recommendation from the City Plan Commission.

As currently envisioned, there would be some small retail shops on the first floor, and a spa, fitness center and function spaces on the lower floors, Bucci said. There would be six apartments per floor, but he said they could not release a price range at such an early stage.

Bucci expects that, if all goes well, it could be two years before a shovel is in the ground, and another two years or more before construction is complete.

City Councilman John J. Lombardi, who represents the Federal Hill area, said that there has been talk about the project for years, and that the developers have been meeting with neighbors and gauging their thoughts for some time. He said that only as the project became more serious in the past month, did opposition begin.

“Up until a few weeks ago, there had been no objections; all the calls I had gotten were in favor,” Lombardi said.

He said that the developers have told him that they plan to hire Providence labor, contribute to the community and not seek tax breaks — all things he likes to hear.

“They’re saying all the right things,” Lombardi said.

dbarbari@projo.com