San Francisco waterfront residents opposed to Mayor London Breed’s plan to build a 200-bed Navigation Center on an Embarcadero parking lot are gearing up for a legal fight if the city moves forward.

In less than a week, a loose coalition of residents from Rincon Hill, South Beach, Mission Bay and other neighborhoods calling themselves “Safe Embarcadero for All” has raised nearly $35,000 to hire lawyers to contest the center’s construction.

Attorneys appear to have already started building a case against the proposal.

A lawyer with the San Francisco law firm Zacks, Freedman & Patterson has also sent a public records request to the mayor’s office, seeking “all documents and records” related to the proposed Navigation Center, including how the city would fund its construction and operation.

The Zacks firm is one of several the Safe Embarcadero group has considered hiring, said Neel Lilani, a resident of the Watermark condominium building on Beale Street who helped found the group and set up the GoFundMe web page to collect donations for legal expenses.

Attorney Andrew Zacks said he hopes the group retains his firm and that the pace of the project was “of great concern.” In an effort to open the center quickly, he said, city officials “in their haste may be making some significant legal errors.”

It’s up to the Port Commission to decide whether the Navigation Center will be built on the site, because the port owns the 2.3-acre parcel, which is across the Embarcadero from Piers 30-32.

The commission is scheduled to vote on leasing the land to the city on April 23, but officials are considering extending that deadline to give the public more time to weigh in on the proposal.

Breed has envisioned keeping the center on the site for four years but remains flexible on the length of the lease. She had hoped to have the center opened by the summer, but looming legal fights could imperil that timeline.

“People want us to address the challenges on our streets and help our unsheltered residents into housing, and I am committed to doing the hard work to make that happen,” Breed said in a statement.

“But it’s incredibly frustrating and disappointing that as soon as we put forward a solution to build a new shelter, people begin to threaten legal action,” she continued. “I get that people have questions about the site, and we are happy to demonstrate how these sites work and the positive impacts they have had in other neighborhoods, but we all need to be willing to be part of the solution.”

Lilani declined to discuss the specifics of how his group might approach a legal challenge if port commissioners green-light the Navigation Center. He did say they are considering possible claims under the California Environmental Quality Act, which would at the very least set back the center’s opening date. There are a number of ways, for example, to challenge the city’s environmental analysis of the site, and litigating those issues could take months.

The center has evoked an intense debate since Breed announced her plan on March 4. Speaking at the first public meetings about the center earlier this month, many waterfront residents said they were convinced the city could not prevent it from turning the neighborhood into a dirty, dangerous place, strewn with needles and trash. Others doubted that homelessness workers would be able to maintain a high level of care at a shelter housing 200 or more people.

Homelessness officials counter, however, that the city is already operating two Navigation Centers with at least 125 beds each. One of those, the Division Circle Navigation Center, is set to add another 60 beds this summer.

But the center’s supporters — including the mayor — have framed the issue in moral terms, saying that the imperatives of addressing the homelessness crisis means pursuing every opportunity to bring unsheltered people inside. And given the difficulties of finding viable sites for homelessness services in San Francisco, land owned by a city agency like the port is extremely attractive to city officials.

Sam Moss, a founding board member of the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) Action group, which supports the project, argued the Navigation Center would improve the very things that waterfront residents are concerned about — safety and cleanliness.

“A Navigation Center is literally trying to take 200 people off the streets. The City of San Francisco and homelessness service providers are trying to stop the exact thing these people were complaining about,” said Moss, who’s also the executive director of Mission Housing Development Corp. “I’m tired of people hating the sight of homelessness more than they hate the fact that people are actually homeless.”

Like many waterfront residents, Lilani said he’s sympathetic to the plight of the city’s homeless, but chafes at the idea of putting a Navigation Center — a 24-hour homeless shelter with enhanced services — in his dense, tourist-heavy neighborhood.

“Frankly, they’re a part of our city and we need to find the right places and solutions for them,” Lilani said. “This is not the right place for a Navigation Center — we need a better long-term solution.”

He also echoed the widely cited argument that the residents of District Six, where the center would be built, have already taken on more than their fair share of homeless shelters and services. There are five other shelters and Navigation Centers spread across the district, which has the highest concentration of homeless people.

“District Six already has a number of homeless shelters and Navigation Centers,” he said. “We’re being asked to take on an unfair proportion of the city’s overall shelter needs. It’s disproportionate and it’s overlooking the health and safety of this densely populated, residential community.”

Not every waterfront resident is against placing a Navigation Center on the site, known as Seawall Lot 330.

Chris Whelan lives on Beale Street, about a block away from the proposed facility. He’s watched with dismay as his neighbors balk at housing development and, now, a homelessness shelter.

Solving the city’s homelessness problem, Whelan said, is a “take-every-avenue-available situation.” The Embarcadero shelter “is one of the great avenues available.”