Mr. Snellgrove is proposing to scale back the tennis club and build a glass and limestone condo complex that would step up from 4 to 12 stories and hold 165 residential units that are expected to be among the priciest in the city.

A coalition of neighborhood groups opposes the project, saying it would destroy the decades-old club and alter the San Francisco skyline. Many of them also fought 555 Washington.

“To give this up for a huge condo project built for the rich hedge-fund executives and an underground parking garage — you’ve got to be kidding me,” said Lee Radner, president of the Friends of the Golden Gateway.

But Mr. Snellgrove’s team is confident that 8 Washington will be approved under the new regime at City Hall, and big money is already lining up behind it. The project’s financer, CalSTRS, the state teachers’ retirement fund, has committed $26.7 million to pre-construction costs, and had spent $23 million as of March 31.

“I would like to think there is a more rational and productive debate in City Hall now,” said P. J. Johnston, a spokesman for the developer, attributing the change to “the supervisors as well as the mayor.”

The development at 555 Washington, a planned 38-story corkscrew-shaped tower near the Financial District and North Beach, drew the same battle lines between developers and neighborhood activists.

Mr. Brown, who oversaw a construction boom during his eight years as mayor, starting in 1996, was a consultant on the project. The developer, Lowe Enterprises, made a donation to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and secured the support of Ms. Pak, the group’s influential consultant, according to people involved with the project.

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“Rose was definitely a supporter,” said Andy Segal, senior vice president of Lowe Enterprises.

Ms. Pak did not return calls seeking comment. Mr. Brown declined to comment.

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The developers attributed their defeat to former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who was elected in 2000 as a liberal firebrand who vowed to slow the proliferation of big-money development projects backed by Mr. Brown.

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Even after Mr. Peskin was termed out of office in 2009, he and the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, a group of outspoken North Beach residents, vigorously fought 555 Washington. On the day of the vote in May 2010, Mr. Peskin lobbied out of the offices of his former colleagues.

Today, Mr. Peskin, who is chairman of the city’s Democratic Party, has seen his influence wane while Mr. Brown and Ms. Pak enjoy a renaissance.

Mr. Brown and Ms. Pak — close friends and political allies — helped install Mr. Lee as interim mayor in January, outmaneuvering progressives allied with Mr. Peskin. That shift at City Hall is translating into an increased pace for development.

Mr. Snellgrove, the developer of the 8 Washington project, has assembled a lobbying team that includes several people with close ties to Mr. Brown: H. Marcia Smolens, one of the city’s highest-paid lobbyists and a longtime Brown fund-raiser; Karin Carlson Johnston, a lobbyist at Ms. Smolens’s firm, HMS Associates; and her husband, Mr. Johnston, who served as Mr. Brown’s spokesman.

While the developers deny that Ms. Pak is working on the project, she has tried to help indirectly. In 2007, she organized a trip to China for friends and city officials that included Mr. Peskin, who was then president of the Board of Supervisors, and Mr. Snellgrove, a longtime friend of Mr. Brown and Ms. Pak.

“He was on the trip she organized and used it as a nonstop 10-day lobbying opportunity,” Mr. Peskin said of Mr. Snellgrove in an interview. “For 10 days we saw him for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We were taking this whole tour of Macau, and he was tagging along whining about his project for three hours. And we just wanted to see Portuguese architecture.”

Mr. Snellgrove declined to comment.

Mr. Snellgrove’s representatives told planning department officials several months ago that they had lined up the necessary six votes on the Board of Supervisors to win approval, according to a city official with knowledge of the project. But they suggested that the window might close after the November election because three supervisors were running for other offices and might have to be replaced.

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“The message was, ‘We have to get this done with the current board,’ ” the official said.

The project’s progress has presented a political headache for David Chiu, the board president whose district includes 8 Washington Street. “I have heard there are attempts to move this faster through the process and have been surprised because I don’t think we have community support that we need,” Mr. Chiu said.

Mr. Chiu, who is also running for mayor, said he did not support the project in its current form.

Mr. Johnston denied that the 8 Washington project was speeding through the approvals process, noting that it originated four years ago. In addition, neighborhood groups have filed a lawsuit against the city, arguing that the planning department is illegally raising height limits to accommodate the project, a claim the department denies.

Whatever the fate of 8 Washington, developers like Mr. Segal, the investor in the 555 Washington project last year, see greater opportunities for development under a Lee administration.

“The executive branch is more animated on this project than it may have appeared on our project,” Mr. Segal said. “It’s a different style.”