ALBANY — Raj Singh opened the Antara Home store in downtown Albany last year, with wares including imported linens and china, and business has been pretty good, he said.

The store is at the corner of James Street and Maiden Lane, but the street address is 488 Broadway. Unfortunately, you can’t get in that way, because the door is locked, just as you can’t get in the front door of the bank headquarters across the street, in what used to be Union Station.

Singh said most of the building, which was constructed in 1908, is empty, while the new owner figures out what to do with it. Singh would like to see it converted to residences, with retail on the ground floor and in the arcade behind the locked Broadway door.

So would Pamela Tobin, executive director of the Downtown Albany Business Improvement District. Tobin and Megan Daly, assistant commissioner of planning and development for the city of Albany, would like to see that redevelopment pattern, with either condominiums or rental apartments, in other downtown buildings, too.

Daly said class B and C office space — especially C, for which demand is relatively low — is a prime candidate for residential conversion. The BID and City Hall see downtown as a good place to reverse Albany’s long population decline, and bring back retail.

Singh, 39, has spent most of his career working for small businesses in big cities, mostly in cosmetics brand management. Antara Home is his first store, and he’s planning soon to move around the corner, and live in an apartment above a restaurant on Maiden Lane.

Singh, who now divides his time between Athens in Greene County and his parents’ home in Niskayuna, sees the move downtown as a statement.

“I believe in the value of cities,” he said, and in reusing old buildings.

And he believes his investment in downtown is paying off.

“It’s generating a nice return already,” he said, partly due to the relatively low overhead he is paying.

The city has been encouraging the conversion of underused upper stories into residences, which has been done at several recent projects on Pearl Street and State Street. The city, the Albany Local Development Corp. and the Community Preservation Corp. can help with financing and feasibility studies, Daly said. The city is “eager to attract downtown residents,” she said.

Two big residential projects on the drawing board would be new buildings on north Broadway, with underground parking. Furthest along is Capital Grand, north of the Leo O’Brien federal building, where 125 luxury condominiums would be built.

A nearby proposal at Quackenbush Square has been delayed by the developer failing to come to terms with a gas station that is an existing tenant. It would include up to 130 market-rate apartments and ground-floor retail.

Both proposals are supported by the city and the BID, Daly and Tobin said. The Quackenbush Square project would include a grocery store, a type of retail that has long been gone from downtown but is obviously needed to sustain residential growth. There is a Price Chopper on Delaware Avenue near the Center Square neighborhood, well west of downtown and Empire State Plaza.

For projects that don’t provide their own parking, Daly said, the city will work to encourage garages to stay open around the clock, and make parking available.

At the western end of downtown, on State Street east of the Capitol, there are plans to rebuild the former Wellington Hotel into a mixed-use building, including residential, office and retail space.

Singh, 39, is not afraid of competition, and would love to see more stores as well as residents downtown. Part of that, he said, is for environmental reasons. His drive from Athens, which he soon won’t be making, is 30 miles each way.

“The more efficient people can be in their lifestyles,” Singh said, “the better off we’re all going to be,” and developing downtowns is better for the environment than building more sprawl over suburban and rural areas.

He does a lot of business with suburban residents, but said most of those few people who do live downtown have dropped by his store. “There’s not much else to do on Saturday,” he said. His store is open then.

There has been a lot of development in downtown Albany in recent years, between the state Capitol and the Hudson River, including major state office buildings for the comptroller’s office and the Department of Environmental Conservation.

In addition to public- and private-sector offices, the area now has major cultural institutions, a thriving restaurant and bar scene, and a pedestrian bridge to the river and Corning Preserve. The bridge is across from Singh’s front door on Broadway, and he said it does lead people to him.

But downtown still lacks the life it used to have decades ago, when more people lived there and department stores anchored a thriving shopping scene.

Despite downtown’s growth in recent years, it is still a “ghost town” most Sunday through Thursday evenings, when you can’t even buy something cheap to eat, according to Chris Higgins. He is the new Albany County legislator representing downtown and Center Square.

While Tobin sees the planned convention center as fitting in well with downtown’s growth, and extending it toward the poorer South End, Higgins is more skeptical. He opposed the convention center on fiscal grounds, fearful that it will become a burden for city taxpayers, whereas Tobin sees it as reinforcing the tax base. She also hopes it will include ground-floor retail “on the prominent streets.”

Higgins conceded that “It looks like they are going to build the thing, which I think is unfortunate.” He wants a strong community benefits agreement, so that, for example, jobs go to local people.

Tobin said residential and retail development go together, feeding off each other, and should be pursued simultaneously. Daly quoted what she said was the conventional wisdom, “Retail follows rooftops,” meaning it will follow residential development. There are still plenty of empty storefronts downtown that could be filled by retail growth.

Tobin and Daly did not have figures for the current number of downtown residents, but said it is growing. And a study sponsored by the BID, updated last year, shows a market for future growth. The study showed younger singles and childless couples as the most likely potential residents downtown, followed by empty nesters and retirees.

Higgins said he supports the city’s efforts to bring more residential and retail development downtown, and to develop poorer neighborhoods nearby, such as Park South.

In the Mansion neighborhood, southwest of downtown, there are few vacant apartments, said Worth Gretter, who is active in the neighborhood association.

“The only houses for sale are large buildings on Grand Street containing four flats, which are a real challenge to maintain and keep filled with good tenants,” she said. “On the night of the recent Bruce Springsteen concert, the restaurants on lower Madison … were full with people who came early to get a parking spot and eat dinner before the show. The sidewalks were full of people and it felt like New York City!”