The mayor’s office held a closed door meeting with neighborhood groups and Downtown developers last Friday to outline what it plans to be the last version of PLAN: Downtown, the contentious zoning update that has been in city limbo since January.

This Downtown zoning upgrade has been in the works for six years.

In January, the city released a draft that would have allowed 500-foot towers along Washington Street. In response to 500 letters of opposition, in July, the city released a new version of the draft that scaled back height along the Boston Common, save for some select pre-approved parcels. But residents weren’t happy, and the process publicly stagnated.

One coalition of neighborhood groups has been continuously working with the city on finding a compromise. They met with city officials in July to talk about a path forward. The Friday meeting was their first contact with the city since then.

“Out of left field, we got an invitation to a meeting with ‘other stakeholders,’” said Rishi Shukla, the head of the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association, who has spearheaded much of the coalition’s efforts. “That was basically all the developers in the area. Presumably, they had these conversations with the developers ahead of time. We had had no follow-up from them, so we went in blind.”

The meeting, which was not public, was attended by Mayor Michelle Wu, Chief of Planning Kairos Shen, and State Representative Aaron Michlewitz, among others. City Councilor Ed Flynn who represents the area was not invited.

Boston Planning Department officials presented the broad strokes of how they would be finalizing PLAN: Downtown. They wanted to prioritize housing but said they had not yet figured out the height challenge.

“Planning staff presented potential updates to the proposed Downtown zoning to the meeting participants,” a city spokesperson said in a statement. “[Changes] include limiting height near sensitive areas, requiring new buildings along Washington Street with height above 200’ to be predominantly residential, [and that] any proposal for a new building with more than 250,000 square feet of office use would need additional zoning approval to ensure every opportunity for residential and mixed-use development alongside office.”

The spokesperson said it was a “productive meeting in which the mayor heard from members of the business community, local residents, and various Downtown stakeholders on these changes.”

Shukla said that, with 30 people in attendance and a one-hour time limit, the meeting was more of a presentation by the city than an invitation to discuss or provide feedback. He also said the city had not provided any more details or analysis about the plan.

“Whether the zoning proposal is ultimately 155 feet of height or 700 feet, the public needs to understand what exactly we’re signing up for and what analysis and work has been done to support it,” Shukla said. “That’s not a commentary on height, it’s just common sense.”

The neighborhood coalition has repeatedly said it does not oppose height, but only wants it to be concentrated in the right places, like the traditional Financial District.

Shukla said Planning officials were clear that they planned to get the draft in front of the Zoning Commission this month. That likely means that the full draft will be released imminently, and that the city will schedule a public hearing in the next two weeks. The coalition also plans to meet with Representative Michlewitz in the next week to share its reactions.

“To the extent the city is trying to revert back to its January plan, that’s just obviously not going to be well received,” Shukla said. “But we have to fully understand what it is that we’re talking about in terms of scale and height, and that’s still not entirely clear to any of us.”