The Biloxi City Council will review this week a request from a high-rise condominium developer who wants to build higher that the present 198-foot height limits on the coastal city.

The developer, GCID, wants to make the high-rise the city’s tallest building at 33 stories.

GCID’s Michael Boudreaux said the west Biloxi site is in a commercially zoned area near three existing high-rises and more than a mile outside the zone that limits building heights because of the flights from Keesler Air Force Base.

Boudreaux said the Tower at Edgewater project fits in with rebuilding plans espoused by the Reviving the Renaissance Committee because it encourages pedestrian traffic into Edgewater Mall and has townhouses, where homes will start at $89,000 but average $159,000.

“We worked with city planners and Peyton Cottrell (owner of Edgewater Village) to have those breakthroughs to make it aesthetically more pleasing and make it very convenient,” he said.

Renaissance Committee chairman Clark Griffith characterized the project as an “attempt to turn our city into a high-rise spectacle that has no soul, no history, no heritage and no architectural charm.”

Griffith criticized the project after the council removed it from its agenda at its Dec. 5 meeting. Boudreaux asked that request be pulled then because he was out of town.