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The Eden Housing development in downtown Palo Alto was once envisioned as a win-win-win situation for all parties involved.

The mixed-use project at 801 Alma St. was supposed to attract shoppers to downtown Palo Alto, give low-income families and seniors almost 100 units of living space, provide Palo Alto Hardware with a larger facility and help Palo Alto reduce its gaping shortage of affordable housing.

But a drastically scaled-down plan -- presented to the Architectural Review Board Aug. 6 -- shows a four-story building featuring 50 units for affordable families and little else. Gone are 46 units of senior housing and offices and businesses that were supposed to occupy the ground floor and the new hardware store -- which presumably will now stay where it is.

The project, which the City Council has encouraged for the past two years, has also been reduced from two buildings to one.

The biggest reason for the change, developers confirmed to the Weekly this week, was the massive pushback from the surrounding community, namely from residents of 800 High St. condominium complex. In the months leading up to the Thursday meeting, residents and their consultants packed into council and Planning and Transportation Commission meetings to decry the size of the project and argue that the project would bring too many cars and too many children to an area ill-suited to either.

Andrea Papanastassiou, Eden Housing's director of real estate development, told the Weekly this week that as the number of complaints piled up and the opposition grew, Eden Housing decided to scrap those elements of the project that didn't relate to its core mission -- to provide affordable housing.

The developer also dropped its original plan of applying for a planned-community zone -- a lengthy process that requires multiple public hearings, an approval by the City Council and a special ordinance that could potentially be overturned in a referendum.

By reducing the size and scope of the project, the project only needs approval from the architectural board before construction could begin.

Eden Housing is developing the project in collaboration with the Community Housing Allicance, a nonprofit group that in 2007 purchased one of the two parcels where the new complex would be built. The other parcel -- site a former electric substation -- is owned by the city.

"We wanted it to be everything to everyone," Papanastassiou told the Weekly. "But in order to make the project work with the planned-community process, we were slipping further and further from our original goals.

"No one wanted to lose the amount of affordable units."

But the recent revisions were not enough to satisfy some residents of 800 High St., including those who formed a group called "Neighbors for a Livable SOFA2." Joseph Mallon and Joop Verbaken, two outspoken critics of the Eden Housing project, told the Architectural Review Board last week that the project remains incompatible with their dense downtown neighborhood.

Mallon said the project is "not ready" and that it tries to squeeze too many units into too small a space. Verbaken argued that the proposed development would exacerbate the area's parking woes. If the Eden Housing project is approved, residents of 800 High St. would have to share the underground garage where they park their cars with their new neighbors.

"We urge you to make sure this project doesn't add to the major problems we already have," Verbaken told the board.

One speaker at the Thursday meeting thought the neighborhood's resistance to the affordable-housing project is ironic. The 800 High St. development had to go through the planned-community process and survive a referendum before Palo Alto gave it the green light.

Dena Mossar, who sits on the Board of Directors of the Community Housing Alliance, was on the City Council at the time.

"As a council member, I carried a heavy load and took a lot of public criticism for supporting the project at 800 High St.," Mossar told the Architectural Review Board. "It is ironic in my mind."

Don Barr, president of the Community Housing Alliance, downplayed the concerns from the 800 High St. residents who said the proposed development's downtown location would make the building unsafe for children.

The site, located close to public transportation and within walking distance of downtown stores and amenities, would be the ideal site for the city's working population, he said.

Barr said he has surveyed six pre-school teachers, medical assistants and employees of Whole Foods Market -- all of whom have kids -- and each one said they would be glad to live in the proposed development.

"We think it'll be a fabulous place for families who are looking for a place to live in Palo Alto," Barr told the Weekly. n

Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be e-mailed at gsheyner@paweekly.com.