If the historic, mythic Lower East Side of yore is gone and, as some say, ready for its figurative tombstone, there is no more obvious sign of the shape of things to come than the steel skeleton on Rivington St. rising above the tenement rooftops.

When completed, it will be a 20-story, 115-room, luxury hotel guaranteed to offer spectacular views. The developer, Paul Stallings, thinks the view of the $30 million building will be attractive from the outside, as well, with it sheathed in glass panels of different shapes and opacities in what he describes as a "Mondrianesque" style. The glass sheathing could start going up in as soon as five to six weeks, he said.

The hotel will feature larger than average, about double-size rooms, of 400 sq. ft. Over half of the rooms will have balconies and many will be corner rooms with views in two directions.

The building has a 20-ft. setback from Rivington St. at the seventh floor and four-ft. setbacks at the 15th, 16th and 18th floors. Some air rights from neighboring buildings were used and it cantilevers six feet over the low-rise Grace Unisex Hair Salon building to its west.

Stallings didn't want to give away the hotel's name, which is 90 percent settled, but he said Rivington, which he called a "classy, interesting"-sounding street name, has got to be a part of it.

The site is located between Essex and Ludlow Sts., just a half block from the First Roumanian-American Synagogue, which struggles nightly to get a minyan, and the historic Essex St. Market, where pushcart vendors once sold their wares.

The Lower East Side of today is a far cry from that pushcart era. In recent years, the area has seen an influx of trendy boutiques, bars and restaurants. Stallings, 50, says the hotel, slated to open in summer 2003, will cater those that are drawn to the area's new scene, including Europeans and entertainment and music types. Unlike the nearby synagogue, he doesn't anticipate any problems filling the hotel.

"The whole Lower East Side area is a scene that's coming alive," Stallings said in an interview on Monday. "It's certainly more alive than Soho. It'll be a logical extension of what's going on there now."

Quirky stores and new restaurants, like Moby's vegan cafe, Teany, are attracting people to the neighborhood for a different sort of experience. Across the street from the future hotel last Saturday night a group of middle-aged women exited Babes in Toyland, a sex books and gadgets store, with their purchases.

"We all got sex toys!" one of them said as they laughed.

Stallings said the hotel's rooms will be set up to allow for flexibility for long-term stay potential, for corporate accounts, and will be equipped with facilities like a small refrigerator, "little cook top" and microwave.

Stallings said he plans to partner with "a fairly well-known local New York hotel operator" to operate the hotel. Stallings would not reveal who this is, but did quash strong neighborhood rumors that it would be a W Hotel. Literally, everyone within a few blocks of the project, from residents to restaurant owners, seems to think or have heard it will be a W. Curious, literally, all of them have contacted friends and friends of friends and relatives who either work for W or are in the hotel or travel industry to check it out.

"No, I can dispel that rumor," Stallings said definitively. "It's not going to be the W. I don't know where that came from." There was also a rumor that the bottom 10 floors would be a hotel and the top 10 floors condominiums, but that's also false, he said.

The hotel will feature a 5,000-sq.-ft. restaurant on the ground floor, a gym (without a pool) and a rooftop entertainment space for parties, catering and special events.

This is Stallings' first hotel and what he calls the "culmination of a lifetime of Lower East Side development. This is very personal for me."

Over the past 20 years, the Midwestern transplant has been one of the largest private developers on the Lower East Side and in the East Village. A lawyer who found he hated practicing law, Stallings discovered he liked developing real estate. He got his start when he bought and renovated an abandoned building on Norfolk St. in 1979. In the last five to six years he has been building new buildings, including, notably a complex on Seventh St. near Tompkins Sq. Park.

"Until five years ago, no one built new buildings on the Lower East Side," he said.

Stallings said the Lower East Side is holding onto its good parts while the bad parts recede.

"The most attractive side of it is still the diversity, the Hispanic, the Orthodox Jewish and the new people coming in," he said. "And the negative side, the drug scene and crime, is gone, so people can come down and enjoy the area. That's the key now - everybody's ready to come down and enjoy the area."

Stallings lived in the neighborhood until his family grew so large - he has six young children - he felt he had to move to the suburbs. Appreciating the neighborhood's mix, he said he wants the hotel's restaurant, for example, to be "accessible to people in the neighborhood, that we don't have a complete us-and-them scene going on."

An in-house designer for Stallings said that the project required no special deep pile driving or other methods and didn't encounter the underground water problems common in the East Village.

Real estate insiders are understandably excited about the project.

"This is the first real skyscraper or high-rise to be privately built in the
Lower East Side since they were developing the Forward building [built in 1912]
on East Broadway," said Bob Perl of Tower Realty.

"Clearly, the building has unparalleled views, probably matchable to Cristadora
[at Ninth St. and Avenue B]. People are recognizing the strength of the market, and the project itself adds to the property values and market value of the Lower East Side." For its sheer height, Perl called the project "ballsy" and "courageous."
The Forward building and Cristadora, a former settlement house, have both been converted residentially.

Andrew Flamm, executive director of the Lower East Side Business Improvement District, said a hotel would be a welcome addition.

"Clearly, having a hotel in the neighborhood will drive foot traffic and be helpful to the commercial district," he said.

On the streets below the future hotel last Saturday night, people seemed fine with even eager, for it.

"We consistently heard it was going to be a W," said Tamar Anitai, 24,
a neighbor. "I'll be ready for the construction to stop. They're using like drills at
7 a.m. and they bring in the rat." (The project is non-union; union members protest at the site with an eight-ft.-tall inflatable rat. Stallings said the workers voted to stay non-union.)

"This is a quiet block," Anitai said. "We only have one bar. Hopefully, there won't be noise outside, celebrities and people waiting to see them."

"Anything to build up the neighborhood is good," said Sandee Wright, 35, sporting bright-red-dyed hair, owner of Whiskey Ward bar on Essex St. "I like the change other than the hike in rent."

At Rush Hour burgers, a new business on Ludlow St., - "You drunk mannn... we open!"says a blurb on the menu - manager Ravid Tiran said, "They working hard to finish it, this hotel. And we are waiting for it."

But a customer was dubious.

"It's getting stale, but with the staleness comes safety," said Alpay Kasal, 29, an animator and videographer for rock parties. "It's just becoming a neighborhood of bars, the college crowd."