ASHEVILLE - One of the city's biggest new housing projects could be built on long-fought-over land eyed previously for treating sewage and later for making beer.

A California development company is proposing to use 137 acres off Ferry Road in South Asheville for a 416-unit subdivision. The Riverwoods development bordering the French Broad River would include 188 single-family "garden homes," 188 duplexes, four live/work units and 36 condominiums.

Los Angeles-based developer Ron Hirji will first have to get City Council zoning approval. That official request is expected to come Tuesday as part of a regular council meeting. It follows a 7-0 Dec. 5 vote by the Planning and Zoning Commission to recommend the council approve the project.

Most recently planned housing projects in Asheville have maxed out at fewer than 300 units. That includes the 293-apartment complex, The District, east of Biltmore Village approved in 2015 and the 290-unit Skyland Exchange approved in 2016 off Long Shoals Road.

Biltmore Park, with 528 units, was approved in 2007.

"This one definitely stands out as a very large residential project," said Vaidila Satvika, an urban planner for city government.

Other large Asheville projects

The District, just outside Biltmore Village: 293 units (approved 2015)

Skyland Exchange off Long Shoals: 290 units (approved 2016)

Mills Gap: 272 (approved 2017)

Biltmore Park: 528 (approved 2007)

Hirji, through a limited liability company, bid $5.3 million a year ago for the property owned by Buncombe County. That surpassed a $5 million bid by a Greenville, South Carolina, developer Deep River South.

While county government owns the land, the unusual and controversial property is part of Asheville. As a satellite parcel, it lies outside regular city limits. It's bordered by Interstate 26 to the northeast, the French Broad to the southeast and the Bent Creek area to the west.

The land had long been owned by Henderson County after Asheville traded it to Henderson as part of a deal to build a city water plant in that county in 1999. Its planned use as a Henderson sewage treatment facility, however, turned out to be unworkable, leaving Henderson's leaders feeling short-changed by the swap.

That led to years of bad blood between the neighboring governments and a fight that made its way into the state legislature.

In 2015, in an attempt to convince Oregon-based Deschutes Brewery to build its East Coast beer-making facility in Asheville, local officials offered the site to the company.

But in-fighting between Democratic and Republican county commissioners and competition from Roanoke, Virginia, lured Deschutes away.

City planners and economic developers have opposed changing land zoning from industrial to residential, saying the area needs to preserve potential manufacturing sites.

But after decades of high-level conflicts over the Ferry Road property, there was no discussion about keeping it industrially-zoned, said Satvika, the city planner.

"What’s so tricky is we’re stuck in that we have a scarcity of housing and it’s true that we have scarcity of viable industrial properties," he said.

City planners had opposed the rezoning in 2017 of industrial property at Mills Gap Road for a 272-unit apartment complex by developer Rusty Pulliam.

Pulliam, whose company is the listing agent for the Ferry Road property, said residential is the best use for the land, which is served only by a two-lane road.

"Ferry Road could not have handled all the industrial use of tractor trailers and beer trucks, not unless it was widened and you condemned all that property affecting people along it."

He called the brewery idea "pie in the sky."

The development as proposed would seek to minimize impacts on the woods, hills and river, he and Satvika said. The property is to include trails and an easement for a planned county greenway.

MORE: 272 apartments approved for South Asheville's Mills Gap Road

MORE: How Asheville's big beer deal fell flat