Next, a possible rending of The Garment District

Where else but here would you find The Garment District?

Don't answer ''New York City." You would be wrong. The Garment District, located on Broadway, is quintessential Cambridge, a local landmark treasured by preservationists for its role in the city's 19th-century industrial history and by bargain-hunting fashionistas for its eclectic and funky clothing store.

But now, in a 21st-century Cambridge twist, the three-story warehouse building near Kendall Square may be razed and replaced with condos.

''It's hard when the reality of the new Cambridge comes up against a local business," said Chris Cassel, 40, longtime manager and president of The Garment District Inc., at his desk in a cramped, first-floor office. Cassel and Brookline real estate developer Tani Halperin are the principal owners of the property at 200 Broadway, purchased for $3.4 million on May 5. Cassel said his personal preference would be to renovate the building, but since he was unable to buy the place outright, it's not for him alone to decide. One option of the ownership team is to demolish the building for condominiums and ground-floor retail -- such as a smaller-scale Garment District operation, Halperin said.

But at least one city official, Cambridge Historical Commission executive director Charles Sullivan, contends the structure is worth preserving. ''I would find this building significant under Cambridge's demolition-delay ordinance and urge the owners to consider adaptive uses," Sullivan said in an e-mail to the Globe.

And, said Area 4 resident and activist Gerald Bergman, ''The entire neighborhood is going condo. Tons of condos." Bergman said he had been aware the building was on the market, but did not know about the sale or proposed development plans. ''I think people appreciated the activity there; it's just dead down there."

Cassel said the plans are not cast in stone, and he is looking to Cambridge for help. ''I'm looking for community support to try to find a way to keep the site as close to its present use as possible and to keep The Garment District here," he said. ''We want to provide affordable clothing to the community, and we want to keep jobs."

Halperin, in a telephone interview, contended it is not feasible to renovate the existing structure into housing. It lacks the required residential setbacks and parking spaces, for starters. He said he hopes to start work on the project ''as soon as possible."

But according to Sullivan, ''structures of this type are easily adapted to other uses."

''While the building appears deteriorated on the exterior, it was very heavily built, with a floor loading of 250 pounds per square foot," he said, meaning it can safely carry considerable weight.

The building's nondescript gray exterior belies the colorful emporium awaiting inside, full of shiny white go-go boots, Led Zeppelin T-shirts, vintage beaded sweaters and wool coats, polyester prom gowns from the '70s, and name-brand slacks, jackets, jeans, and dresses. On the first floor, customers sift through piles of clothes on the floor and their finds are weighed and priced by the pound. (The longtime price of $1 a pound is up to $1.50 now.) The second floor has clothes grouped on racks by styles and colors. The markdowns and the stylish steals attract the upscale and the downtrodden, but primarily female college students, Cassel said.

And ''diverse" is how Cassel described the Dollar-A-Pound operation's clientele -- shoppers ranging from a Mercedes-driving woman to groups of Haitian immigrants rummage through the huge pile of clothing on the musty wood floor.

Laura Chew, 15, and her best friend, Sarah Condict, 15, perused a rack of short cotton skirts on the second floor last week. ''You can find unusual stuff you can't find at a mall," she said.

And you can't beat the cost, either, they said. ''That's important, because we are teenagers and we're cheap," Chew said. They enjoy shopping here for skirts, purses and the occasional ''$10 Gap jeans," Condict said.

In a scene borrowed from the movie, ''The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," the Lexington teens were looking for skirts that would fit both. Separated for the summer, they plan to send the skirts back and forth to each other every week with written messages on them. The girls said they would be disappointed if the store closed or changed. ''It would be like losing a whole other way to shop," Chew said.

One clue that this is no ordinary retail store -- or warehouse operation, for that matter -- is the baby blue Vespa often parked outside the front door, owned by sales clerk Rebecca Trueblood.

''I'm so happy to add to the scene," said Trueblood, 36, who said she commutes from her Jamaica Plain home on the motorscooter. ''Every single item of clothing that I own comes from this place," she said, adding that she prefers the '50s full-skirt look, even while riding the Vespa. Razing the building, she said, ''would be a big loss. It's kind of like an old battleship of a building. You just can't buy character."

''It's a very special place with lots of selection that you won't find anywhere else," said employee Sarah Ritt, who sports a beehive do and a '60s fashion flair. ''I go for the late '60s and early '70s -- clothes that look like candy. The building is part of what makes this store so special," Ritt said, echoing the sentiments of other employees interviewed. ''I think part of what makes us so attached is because we are attached to the building."

Store manager Liz Donovan agreed. ''It's kind of fitting to work in an old building selling old clothes," she said. ''It kind of gets people in the mood."

Cassel, under the owners' operating agreement, has the option to purchase the new building's ground floor and reopen The Garment District there, Halperin said, and the number of condos is dependent on Cassel's decision. But the business would not be the same as the current one, which employs 30 full-time employees and utilizes most of the current building space for its sizeable sorting and warehouse operations. The interior is 45,536 square feet. According to Halperin, ground-floor retail space in the new building would be approximately 14,000 square feet, roughly the same size as the current store's second-floor main retail area. Cassel would not provide details about the help he seeks, except to say that he planned to meet with residents and activists to discuss the situation.

There is time -- at least six months -- for public review. Under an ordinance adopted by the City Council in 1979 to protect historically significant buildings at least 50 years old, the city cannot issue a demolition permit until the Historical Commission has reviewed the application and held a public hearing. The six-month period allows property owners, city officials, and residents to explore ways to preserve the building or at least mitigate the effects of demolition. So far, no plans have been filed with the city, including a demo permit application.

''A new building will just improve the neighborhood," Halperin said. ''Basically, we plan to do something nice. We want to hear whatever people have to say."

Cassel, who once worked at Harrods in London, has been with The Garment District since 1990 and ran the company for the previous owners, Bruce and Gail Cohen. Cassel negotiated with them for the right to purchase the property, a complicated and expensive legal process, he said.

''Even though I had the right to buy it, re-developers came out in force to try to acquire it," he said.

The business is 18 years old and Dollar-A-Pound's roots precede that. The pound business began in 1980, an offshoot of Harbor Textiles Inc., a producer of rags and wiping cloths for industry. The Garment District opened to complement the Dollar-A-Pound business.

Hidden from the view of customers who peruse the first- and second-floor retail spaces is the multilevel maze of massive floor space, crammed with clothes stored in barrels and on racks, where employees process several million pounds of clothes a year, according to the companyIn the consignment area, an employee checks clothes and even ''authenticates" designer goods, like a black Chanel handbag. Another room holds the company's online store headquarters.

Any really valuable item is put up for Internet auction, like the 1940s pair of Levis that fetched $6,000.

There is a baling press from the 1950s -- clothing not put up for sale is baled and shipped to developing countries. Unusable items are sent to a ''shoddy mill" and ground up.

''We're not a small company, but we are a local company," Cassel said. ''It's not a little vintage store. It's a big, historic operation."