A group of real-estate developers have commissioned a study to rethink Canal Street as they ratchet up a controversial effort to allow for taller buildings along Chinatown's main thoroughfare.

The developers say that Canal Street's role as a major transit hub and commercial center means they should be allowed to build high-rise offices and apartments in place of the low-slung buildings that occupy much of the street. But they'll have to overcome concerns that their push would damage Chinatown's economy and heritage.

'It's such an important part of New York, and right now it's sort of blighted,' Keith Lipstein of developer ABS Partners Real Estate LLC says of Canal Street. 'I'm a big proponent, at least from a commercialstandpoint, of that area being rezoned to the highest possible density.'

Mr. Lipstein's company manages a one-story property now home to the Phoenix Mall at Canal and Lafayette Street. He says the property -- owned by some ABS executives as well as Long Island City real-estate company First Pioneer Properties Inc. -- could be developed into a 12-story, mixed-use building, but that current zoning would only allow a six-story structure on the site.

The real-estate developers' nascent movement to rezone Canal Street comes amid a broader effort by business and community leaders in Chinatown to both revitalize and preserve the historicneighborhood. That effort is being spearheaded by the Chinatown Working Group, a community group that is hoping to agree on a comprehensive plan for Chinatown and submit it to the city by the end of the year.

The developers, who make up the Chinatown Business and Property Owners Group, hope to persuade the Chinatown Working Group to incorporate their proposals into its broader plan for the neighborhood. 'There has not been the kind of focus on Canal Street as there needs to be,' said Douglas Woodward, a planning consultant who represents the developers in the community.

But some Chinatown groups are pushing a competing plan for rezoning the neighborhood that would largely limit new development. Josephine Lee, a spokeswoman for Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, argued that allowing more dense, high-rise development along Canal Street would destroy Chinatown's vitality.