Oldest city gentrifying:

Latin America’s oldest colonial city is aiming for a rebound, pouring tens of millions of dollars into repairing streets, cleaning up trash, installing streetlights and renovating centuries-old buildings in hopes of getting more of the Dominican Republic’s 5 million tourists a year to spend less time at the beach and more in the capital’s longneglected historic center.

Business owners are delighted, but residents of Santo Domingo’s walled city are watching nervously, fearful that they will be priced out by a surge of stylish new restaurants and boutiques.

“Bringing more tourists here can be traumatic for us,” said Pedro del Castillo, the 67-year-old president of the neighborhood’s residents’ association. “It seems like the aim is for us, the residents, to leave.”

The city’s most ambitious restoration project in decades is funded by a $120 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, most of which still must be approved by the Dominican Republic’s congress.

The first $30 million in development money has gone to paint 800 homes, restore 200 colonial-era facades, replace water mains and street lighting and install new sidewalks. More private business is already moving in, with some 325 new cafes, restaurants, galleries and luxury condominiums opening in the colonial center over the past five years, according to official figures.

The center is “a diamond that needs polishing,” said Silvanh Riedel, manager and part-owner of the Billini boutique hotel.

Angelo Louis, a 19-year-old barber, rents a 90-square-foot (8.4-squaremeter) space without a bathroom in centuries-old El Conde street for $350 a month, and has to leave because the privately owned building will be restored with public money in coming months. He said he fears that the owner of the remodeled buildings will raise the rent and make it impossible for him to move back.