(02-15) 16:38 PST San Francisco -- Developers and their supporters, including the San Francisco Giants, filed suit Friday to remove a waterfront height-limit initiative from the city's June 3 ballot, arguing that it would intrude on the state's jurisdiction over the shoreline and the Port Commission's authority to manage the waterfront.

The initiative, sponsored by the Sierra Club's San Francisco chapter and other limited-growth advocates, would require voter approval for any new development on the city's waterfront that exceeded existing limits on the height of new buildings.

The same groups successfully opposed a November ballot measure that would have cleared the way for a luxury condominium complex near the Ferry Building. Supporters submitted 21,000 petition signatures for the new initiative Feb. 4, more than twice the number of valid signatures required, and election officials have certified the measure for the ballot.

Invalidation sought

But opponents, in a lawsuit filed in Superior Court, said the initiative violates both state and local law and should be invalidated before the election.

The ballot measure seeks to regulate "state lands that are held in trust for all the people of the state, not just San Franciscans," attorney Robin Johansen said in the suit. Those lands, she said, include all shorefront property that was "tidelands" when California adopted its Constitution in 1879.

The state "has expressly prohibited those lands from being subject to local initiatives," Johansen wrote.

When the state transferred the waterfront land to the city, she said, a 1968 law specified that the Port Commission - not the Board of Supervisors or the voters - would have exclusive authority over waterfront planning. The City Charter also confers planning authority on the commission, Johansen said, noting that the height-limit initiative was drafted as an ordinance rather than a Charter amendment, which requires more signatures.

Unless the courts remove the initiative from the ballot, the suit said, "planning on the waterfront will be frozen through the June election, then likely for years thereafter if the measure passes."

In response, Jon Golinger, director of the No Wall on the Waterfront campaign for the ballot measure, said the developers had no such qualms over city voters making decisions about shoreline height limits when they sought voter approval of the November ballot measure addressing the 8 Washington condos.

"They're trying to keep the voters of San Francisco from weighing in on the future of the waterfront that belongs to all of us," he said.

The suit was filed on behalf of three individuals, including a leader of the local Building and Construction Trades union. But it is being funded by development interests, including the Giants, whose plans for a high-rise neighborhood in an area that is now their main parking lot are at stake. "We are supporting and helping to fund this challenge, along with a growing list of concerned citizens and community organizations," said Giants spokeswoman Staci Slaughter.

The initiative would also require voter approval for the development of the industrial Pier 70 area and the Golden State Warriors' proposed 18,000-seat waterfront arena. The 125-foot-high arena is planned for Piers 30-32, where the height limit is now 40 feet. The Warriors have not challenged the initiative, and some representatives have said privately that the team is prepared to go to the voters for approval.

City supervisors set the height limits and can change them. But Johansen, the lawyer in Friday's suit, said in an interview that the Port Commission has ultimate authority over waterfront development and could overrule the supervisors if they refused to raise height limits for a proposed shoreline development.

1990 voter initiative

Golinger, spokesman for the ballot measure's sponsors, said that's not the way the land has been managed. He cited a 1990 voter initiative that banned hotels on the city's piers and placed a moratorium on waterfront construction until the city adopted a comprehensive development plan - a plan, Golinger said, that did not confer exclusive authority on the Port Commission. The plan, adopted by both the Board of Supervisors and Port Commission, contained waterfront height limits, he said.

"Zoning ordinances regulate the height of waterfront land," Golinger said. "The Port Commission has abided by this."