SANTA CRUZ — With the gravity of a legislative body on the brink of switching its majority, the Santa Cruz City Council spent more than three hours Tuesday debating approvals for a major downtown housing and commercial development.

In a 5-2 vote, the council ultimately approved the six-story Pacific Front project, a 205-unit housing project with ground-floor commercial space and two floors of parking garage included. Among its most hotly debated topics were the city rule exceptions allowing the developer to build a market-rate project without affordability restricted rental units, in exchange for dedicating two to three parcels of adjacent Pacific Avenue property to the city. The city is expected to use the land to build a 100 percent affordable unit housing development.

The discussion drew a standing-room-only crowd to the council’s final meeting of the year. The midday meeting’s audience included a large number of people wearing Northern California Carpenters Regional Council T-shirts, in addition to many local residents who waited nearly two hours to begin sharing their opinions.

Among speakers supporting the project, Planning Commissioner Robert Singleton said the project was not “coming out of the woodwork,” but was “actually the project we all had in mind” in city planning efforts. John McKelvey, an architect, said the Pacific Front development, combining seven parcels at Laurel Street, Pacific Avenue and Front Street, is additive, rather than “subtractive” proposal for the city’s downtown.

“I believe this project is a down payment on righting the housing ship that we have foundered on for 40 years,” McKelvey said.

Criticisms of the project ranged from accusations of neighborhood “gentrification” and concerns about potentially high new unit rents, to the project being “rushed” and “wagging the tail of capitalism.” Speaker Ron Pomerantz said the developer got a “sweetheart deal” from city staff in not having to including affordable rental units on-site.

“If the current council doesn’t resolve to enforce its own standards on the largest development proposed in the next 30 years, then the new council should reconsider that decision,” former Councilman Micah Posner said. “Market-rate housing is failing our city, which is why the citizens demanded at least 15 percent affordable housing. You have no right to unravel that.”

Though Councilwoman Sandy Brown questioned the city attorney closely on governance rules that would allow any member of the council who voted for the project to reopen the discussion later in the meeting, after three newly elected council members were sworn in to office, she and Councilman Chris Krohn opted to cast the item’s two “no” votes.

During a recess, Krohn said it would have seemed disingenuous to vote to approve the project, after spending the meeting railing against it. He said he was confident, however, that “others will address it” in the future. The city received notice of potential litigation related to the city’s reliance on earlier downtown development environmental studies for the current project, and potential conflict with the 1980 voter-approved Measure O, requiring downtown developments to set aside a percentage of their units at affordable rates. The threatened litigation was discussed by the council in a closed session prior to the regular meeting.