LIVERMORE — In a stunning development, the City Council on Monday axed a developer it had been working with for a year to develop a new downtown.

The action comes after a public outcry and heated debate over the downtown plan, a controversy that dominated the November City Council election and ushered in two new council members.

The city last year awarded Lennar Multifamily Communities, along with Presidio Companies, an exclusive negotiating agreement to develop a plan for an 8.2-acre downtown site. Their contracts, which were set to expire Monday, was due for a 9-month renewal.

The council voted to extend Presidio’s contract for four months. The company has plans to develop a 135-room Marriot hotel. Rikesh Patel, representing Presidio, stated that they were “1,000 times committed to building an upscale hotel somewhere on the site.”

But it was a different story for Lennar. Their original plans called for 260 housing units, 200 of them apartments and the rest condos, a 550-space parking garage, a 12,000-square-foot market hall and a 4,000 square-foot conference space.

In August, the council asked for more study on parking and traffic in the area before deciding how to move forward. Those studies are expected in the next several months.

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New councilmen Bob Coomber and Bob Carling had both campaigned on the promise that they wanted to reduce housing in the downtown plan, or see no housing at all.

In Carling’s campaign platform, he echoed what many members of the public said Monday night: Why didn’t the city get the community’s ideas first on the downtown before choosing a developer?

“The choice of Lennar has been a mistake,” said resident Doug Mann. “Lennar didn’t prove to be a positive force; they didn’t understand our culture.”

Others like Jeff Kaskey, part of the ad hoc Livermore Community Group that made its own plans for the downtown, said the election was a clear message to restart the process. His group calls for cutting the residential units to less than half, lowering building heights, adding a pedestrian walkway and increasing parking underground.

Mayor John Marchand said, however, that Lennar was chosen not for its plan for the downtown, but “because they would have the managerial and financial capacity to build whatever the community wanted.”

He said the city has not chosen a plan yet, and has not had a chance to negotiate with them.

“The plan is to find out what the community wants,” Marchand said.

The city wants to go back to the community in workshops in the coming months to get a feel for what they want to see in the downtown. The project Lennar had presented “was in response to the overachieving large global ideas the city had,” Marchand said.

Councilman Bob Woerner said it was unfortunate that the community became polarized on this issue. He said he wasn’t sure if the community could still get behind using Lennar at this point and anticipated there would be a battle at the workshops if the city extended Lennar’s contract.

Lennar has had a controversial past with nearby Concord. Last year, Concord chose Lennar Urban to develop 4,400 homes on a former military base, even after allegations of influence peddling and backroom deal-making rocked City Hall and undermined public confidence in the integrity of the developer selection process.

An investigation found that Lennar had engaged in lobbying when it donated $16,800 to Mayor Tim Grayson’s state Assembly campaign.