An artist’s rendering of the proposed Sierra Suites hotel.

PROVIDENCE — Although the planned summer start date is quickly slipping away, a partner in the Hotel Sierra project vows that the development plan is still alive, and that none of the major players have pulled out.

“We have not pulled out of it; we are still in the planning stages,” said Joseph DiBattista, a downtown developer and co-owner of the Civic Center Parking Garage next to the prospective hotel site on Fountain Street.

DiBattista said that work will not start this summer, and he’s not sure when it will begin.

“Not yet. We’re not that close. They’re still in the planning stages,” he said.

The proposed hotel, formerly known as a Sierra Suites, would be on a lot between Washington and Fountain streets, tying into DiBattista’s parking garage. It is one of several moderately priced hotel projects in various stages of completion or development in the city, where luxury hotels dominate the marketplace.

The project is a partnership between Kansas’ LodgeWorks and Civic Center Parking Associates, the consortium of several local developers and lawyers that owns the site and the garage.

To clear the site for the 11-story, 161-room hotel, LodgeWorks knocked down two buildings: 149-157 Washington St., a three-story building that once housed the restaurants Cuban Revolution and New Japan and the bar Talk of the Town, and 132-134 Fountain St., the former site of a McDonald’s restaurant. Since their demolition this spring, the site has been an empty lot with little activity.

DiBattista’s partner in the garage, developer and Cranston City Council President Aram G. Garabedian, would not answer questions about the project, and a third partner, Matthew Marcello, is out of town for the week. LodgeWorks’ local attorney, David Barricelli of Hinckley, Allen, & Snyder, did not return a call seeking comment.

The empty lot has prompted curiosity as to whether the project was actually going forward. Among the curious, City Planning Director Thomas E. Deller.

“Ironically, last week I asked my staff to see what was happening there,” Deller said. “The word I got back is that they want to make an appointment with me next week to talk about it. … That could mean anything. It could mean it’s delayed a year or so, and they want to do temporary parking. It could mean it’s delayed six months. It could mean anything.”

With the Washington and Fountain Street buildings just the latest structures to come down without quick replacement, many are now questioning whether the city’s regulations are strong enough to preserve the city’s urban fabric.

Providence can’t keep allowing developers to knock down buildings without assurance that the projects will go forward, or at least some sort of financial penalty if it does not, said Jeff Nickerson, of the urban-growth group Greater City: Providence.

“We are for some reason continuing to knock holes in that remaining urban grid. The Hotel Sierra site, the old circular gas station at Atwells and Broadway, the old Public Safety Complex, the One-Ten Westminster site, Grant’s Lot ... What is next? The Arcade?” Nickerson said.

“I suspect that in many ways the city is encouraging unadulterated demolition. Developers can bring financially shaky proposals to the table, knowing full well that if their financing falls through, they’ll be allowed to park cars on the vacant lot. The Procaccianti Group has even gone so far as to cry financial hardship about the minimum landscape requirements for a surface lot. The city needs to start defending itself against these sorts of predatory developers,” he said.

And he shuddered at the idea that the property might become another temporary parking lot, saying the city should immediately write that option out of the zoning ordinance.

Deller acknowledged that the regulations may need improvement.

“Every time something like this happens, it makes you sit down and review your regulations. And this is one of the things we’ll have to sit down and think about,” Deller said.

Deller said that it would be a major topic at the Downtown planning charette scheduled for October.

dbarbari@projo.com