It has been one of the longest-running arguments in Annapolis history.

Should the city spend $100 million in city, state and federal funds on raising City Dock to protect its 380-year-old downtown from climate-driven flooding and top it with a waterfront welcome center?

Thursday night, the likely final public hearing on the plan concluded with the back and forth that has dogged it for six years.

This is so not Annapolis.

“This decision is consequential, and the core of our National Historic Landmark District — one of the most significant in the nation — deserves a smaller, more contextual building, and this design is not it,” Historic Annapolis President Karen Theimer Brown said.

Annapolis needs this.

“We are making a public space for the next generation, a public space that people are calling the people’s yacht club,” said Mayor Gavin Buckley, the leading proponent of the project.

All of that passion, all of the hours spent on this might be moot.

Warning signals are flashing bright red — a $33 million federal grant crucial to the project might not materialize.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is reviewing the city application, just “paused” a $16 million grant award for a similar project in Cambridge across the Chesapeake Bay.

“This amount has been selected and is under further review prior to obligation of funds,” said Jorge Castillo, spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Emergency Management. “It is unclear if this would be subject to discontinuation outside of normal eligibility concerns.”

Outside of normal eligibility concerns is an oblique way of describing President Donald Trump, his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, and their passions for slashing federal spending and disbelief in climate change.

FEMA officials did not respond to requests for comment.

City officials understand the implications but are moving ahead as if the grant is coming by September.

The project would remove 150 parking spaces at City Dock, create an elevated park as a flood barrier, and surround it with pop-up walls and pumps. It would wrap around to Compromise Street, adding more barriers and pumps.

Atop it all would be the welcome center, a 4,553-square-foot space for the harbor master, public bathrooms, laundry and other boater facilities, plus a multipurpose space for educational programs or conferences.

Burr Vogel, Annapolis’ public works director, said the city intends to move the harbor master’s office out of its current building, which is slated for demolition, and begin electrical work this summer.

If the $33 million grant arrives, Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. will start major construction after the fall boat shows — one year behind schedule.

There is no plan for what happens without the FEMA grant. The city could abandon raising City Dock to 8 feet above the water level and create a flat park with floodwalls.

“It’s an oversimplification to think you could just build it because there’s a lot of other things that go into that,” Buckley said. “But just the cost of constructing that, we could, in a nuclear option, do.”

“We have the money to do that and build the welcome center.”

The pause in Cambridge is not an exact parallel.

That project would replace 1.6 miles of riverbank with barriers and a shoreline with plants that absorb flooding, along with habitat restoration.

Larry White, director of the Make Cambridge Resilience Initiative, said the Choptank River floods there five to six times a month, often with 4-foot-high waters. That’s only slightly less than the 5 feet during Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003, a storm that flooded Annapolis with almost 8 feet.

The cities are working through different FEMA programs. Weeks of funding freezes and court rulings make the outcome impossible to predict.

Vogel said his contacts at FEMA expect to complete their review.

But chaotic layoffs, firings and the dismantling of entire agencies mean FEMA employees may not know what’s going to happen either.

Politically, Annapolis may not have foreseen the complexities of the process. Buckley expressed bewilderment last year when construction was delayed as the city waited on FEMA.

Vogel attributed any disconnect over the application to the differences between historic preservation work in Annapolis and FEMA’s national expectations.

Then last fall, an anonymous critic won a court injunction on the resilience portion of the project, claiming it was improperly approved. A hearing is set for next month.

More than 60 comments were submitted before Thursday’s hearing, and testimony stretched on for more than four hours. A primary concern about both the proposed elevated park and welcome center is that they would change the character of downtown.

“This building has nothing to do with resiliency,” Brown said in a video released a few days before the hearing.

The city proposal would rise to the height limit and connect to the Burtis House, home of a 19th-century waterman. A small park at the end of Prince George Street, which would be named for the late historian Vince Leggett, would provide more public water access.

The city has compromised with critics, changing the building’s orientation, reducing its size and removing elements such as an outdoor dining space.

It has won zoning approval, and the preservation commission’s job is to ensure that the center meets design standards.

Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman told the commission the project is a huge breakthrough in public water access.

“I am extremely enthusiastic about this project in general,” he said. “I would hate to see it fail.”

In the end, the preservation commission approved the project unanimously.

“I think it is an asset — architecturally, aesthetically and historically — to the city of Annapolis,” Chair Will Scott said.

If federal money does not arrive, though, parts of the process will start over. That would allow the mayor and City Council elected in November to make changes.

Buckley, who is term-limited, sees the irony in turning what he describes as his legacy over to others for completion.

“I think it says something about how hard it is to change anything in this town.”