Mayor London Breed has one big hope for San Francisco’s Balboa Reservoir — that history will not repeat itself.

Three times in the 1980s and 1990s, San Francisco mayors Dianne Feinstein and Art Agnos fought to build housing on the 17-acre parking lot next to City College of San Francisco known as the Balboa Reservoir.

But those efforts were thwarted by opposition from a coalition that included residents from neighboring Westwood Park as well as students and faculty from City College, the main campus of which sits just to the east of the reservoir.

Now Breed — faced with an unprecedented housing crisis — is hoping to avoid the same fate as her predecessors as she ramps up what is likely to be a fierce battle over building at least 1,100 homes on the lot.

The current proposal— which will go to the Planning Commission for approvals early next year — calls for homes for sale and rent in eight buildings, 50% of which would be below market rate. The project would have a 2-acre public park, community center and child-care facility. About 150 homes would be set aside for City College staff at below-market-rate rents.

“The Balboa Reservoir project is an integral part of Mayor Breed’s vision for adding more housing at all income levels throughout the city,” said Ken Rich, development director for the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. “It represents a critical opportunity to provide 1,100 desperately needed housing units in the western part of San Francisco, on land owned by the city.”

But once again the dreams of a mixed-income neighborhood replacing 1,167 parking spaces — less than half of which are used even on a busy day — are facing opposition from both residents and City College staff and students.

At a recent Planning Commission hearing, residents bemoaned the project as being out of scale with the single-family residential enclaves of Westwood Park and Sunnyside. They said it would clog the streets with cars and exacerbate already tough parking, despite it being a 10-minute walk from the Balboa BART and Muni stations.

One resident called it a “downtown-style project without the downtown-style streets.” Another called the project “a developer’s field of dreams and an environmental nightmare for the surrounding neighborhood.”

Concerns from City College faculty and students centered mostly on the loss of parking. Students often park on the site when the upper lot to the east is full. While the lot is at times three-quarters full, two recent weekday visits at 11 a.m. found fewer than 200 cars there.

But students who spoke at the September hearing said the lot provides much-needed flexibility as they juggle one or two jobs in addition to college classes.

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Student Michael Adams said the parking lot is “more than a piece of asphalt” and has “cultural, social and economic value.” He scoffed at the notion that City College is well served by public transit, despite the proximity of BART and multiple Muni bus and street car lines.

“Rapid transit in San Francisco is getting in a car and driving twice as far in half the time as you can get there on Muni or BART,” he said.

Brad Wiblin, an executive vice president with Bridge Housing, a nonprofit builder developing the project with Mission Housing Corp. and AvalonBay, said the development team tried to balance the need for parking with the environmental goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The project will have 550 spots for 1,100 units — plus a 750-car garage serving City College and the public.

The garage will be below market rate but not as cheap as the reservoir. Currently students pay $50 a semester to park, while parking is free for faculty and staff.

“Currently parking is cheaper than taking BART — that is why so many people drive to City College,” Wiblin said.

A large percentage of students and faculty who drive live within 3 miles of campus.

Many residents and City College faculty and students also argued that the proposed project should feature all affordable units and no market-rate homes. The current plan calls for the market-rate developer to pay for a third of the affordable housing — 380 units. The rest will be subsidized by the city.

Of the 550 affordable units, close to half would be affordable to a two-person household making about $54,000 a year, and less than half would be for a two-person household making $118,000 a year. The 150 units set aside for staff and faculty would be priced for a two-person household making $118,000 a year.

Wynd Kaufmyn, an engineering professor at the school, said that she would support housing at the Balboa Reservoir, but only if it were 100% affordable.

“I am not trying to save a parking lot. I am trying to save public land,” Kaufmyn said. “We have public land being sold to a private developer. This is not going to help the affordability crisis. Even what they are calling affordable housing is not affordable to our part-time teachers or students.”

Wiblin said the entire project was driven by the Balboa Reservoir Community Advisory Committee, which held 41 public meetings over four years.

The committee agreed that a mixed-income neighborhood was desirable and also asked for a public park, community center, child-care facility and housing for City College faculty and staff, Wiblin said.

“To their credit, they are going to get the public benefits they asked for,” he said. “Obviously not everyone is 100% happy.”

Not everyone is against the project. At the Planning Commission, some residents said the developers should build more than 1,100 homes. Ingleside resident Christopher Peterson said the project has too much parking, not too little.

“There is no need for such a large parking garage,” he said. “It would undercut the city’s effort to respond to the climate crisis by limiting automobile usage.”

Another Ingleside resident, 24-year-old Ben Snyder, said he is forced to live with his parents despite having a college degree and a job. The project would provide “reasonably sized units that are transit-accessible.”

“People will be able to live in these units without cars rather than living in Modesto and driving an hour and a half into San Francisco,” he said.

But if history is any indication, it could be the voters of San Francisco who determine the fate of the reservoir. Three times in the 1980s, voters faced the question of whether housing should be built there. They first rejected the project, then approved it and finally voted it down a second time.

“Three ballot measures — won one and lost two,” said Bill Witte, president of developer Related California, who was the head of housing and economic development for the city in that era. Balboa Reservoir “is a tough sell.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen