Former Brisbane Mayor Clara Johnson says she sympathizes with the housing advocates who’ve been coming to City Council meetings over the past few years to lobby for the building of thousands of units of housing in her little town.

She wishes some of them could move to Brisbane, she really does. But not 4,000 of them. And not at the 684-acre former rail yard and landfill known as the Baylands, which she believes is sufficiently contaminated enough that it can’t be made safe for human habitation.

“All the young people who have been calling us bad names — I wish I had an answer for them,” she said. “I certainly don’t believe that I, or the city of Brisbane, can solve this problem for the whole Bay Area.”

Johnson’s stand against a major infusion of housing comes as Brisbane, population 4,693, wrestles with Measure JJ, a general plan amendment on the November ballot that would allow 1,800 to 2,200 homes and up to 6.5 million square feet of commercial space to be built on the Baylands, a barren, triangular site on San Francisco’s southern border.

But while only Brisbane’s 2,686 registered voters will weigh in on Measure JJ, it’s not just Brisbane residents who are interested. Across the region the future of one of the Bay Area’s biggest buildable sites is seen as a litmus test of whether Bay Area towns have the political will to tackle the ongoing housing crisis, even if that means disruption in a town many residents like the way it is.

In conversations at places like Madhouse Coffee on Visitacion Avenue, residents pick apart how the development would impact city finances, environmental safety, public education and open space.

“There is a lot of interest and a lot of anxiety on both sides — people in Brisbane tend to resist change,” said Nancy Lacsamana, a 34-year resident who heads the Yes on Measure JJ committee. “We recognize how big this is and how it could change people’s feeling about the town. It’s going to be a lot of one-on-one discussions, just talking to your neighbors. To be perfectly honest, in our town, it could come down to 20 or 30 votes.”

The Baylands site is now zoned for commercial use only.

Measure JJ would amend Brisbane’s zoning plan to allow housing on about 20 percent of the property at its northern end. The housing would start at the top of Industrial Way and extend to the former Schlage Lock property across the San Francisco border, where the owner of the Baylands property, Universal Paragon Corp., is in the early stages of developing 1,650 units.

Measure JJ’s proponents argue that the Baylands is one of the best spots for dense housing in the inner Bay Area. While Brisbane may be a small town, they say, the regional housing crisis requires that large sites be developed, particularly ones close to transit and jobs.

The Baylands is home to a little-used Caltrain station, and the northwestern corner is next to the end of San Francisco’s T-Third Muni line. The housing units would be steps from the retail, parks and offices also planned for the site and a short train ride to job centers in San Francisco and the Peninsula.

The development is also an opportunity to create large new parks and bike trails, and potentially build a new K-12 school, according to City Councilman Cliff Lentz, a supporter of the measure. Brisbane does not have a high school.

“We have an incredible opportunity to create one of the most sustainable developments in the country — a wonderful community on lands that have been abandoned and abused,” Lentz said.

But nearly as compelling as the benefits the measure could bring local residents, Lentz said, is what will happen if it does not pass.

Before the Brisbane City Council voted to put Measure JJ on the ballot, state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, had introduced draft legislation that would have taken planning authority for the Baylands away from the city and given it to the state, a move that was also supported by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. Hill withdrew the legislation after Measure JJ was placed on the ballot.

If the zoning were to be left up to the state, the number of housing units built there could end up closer to 4,400, which is what the property owner, Universal Paragon, had originally proposed. Matt Regan, senior vice president of public policy for the Bay Area Council, the regional business-supported economic policy organization, said the state has an obligation to step in if Brisbane residents don’t allow residential development on the site.

He said he hopes “Brisbane voters take control of their destiny” and approve the measure.

“Nobody wants a situation where the state is mandating, at a granular level, how cities have to grow,” Regan said. “But if you have a significant parcel like the Baylands that is so important to the region, and the city chooses not to act, then the state has an obligation to step in.”

Lentz said the scaled-down project is the city’s best bet to retain planning authority over the Baylands.

“I want Brisbane to maintain land use authority, not just for the housing but also in regards to public transportation, open space, recreation and commercial development,” he said. “It’s important that Brisbane is the one that decides land use decisions for the Baylands — not Sacramento.”

To opponents, the prospect of the state forcing thousands of new housing units on Brisbane amounts to bullying, said Johnson, the former mayor.

“I’m not going to support putting homes in places that are unsafe,” she said.

Measure JJ requires the land to be cleaned to a level allowing for “ground floor contact” — a high standard of remediation which, in addition to housing, allows uses like schools, day care centers and parks. The state Department of Toxic Substances Control and the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board would oversee the cleanup of the site, which is permeated by fuel oils, heavy metals and methane gas.

But Michele Salmon, who heads up the No on JJ committee, said housing development should only be considered if the site is cleaned up. And she doesn’t think that’s possible.

“Do I trust it can be cleaned up to a level that is safe for human habitation? No I don’t,” she said. “I don’t think we have technology or the ability to deal with that level of contamination. And I don’t consider covering it with a bunch of dirt to be remediation. It’s a cover-up, not a cleanup

“They have not done a thorough examination of the toxins on the property, yet they have the hubris to think they can clean it up to ... the highest standard set by the state,” she said.

Salmon also contends the housing is likely to be too expensive for most current Brisbane residents to afford. The plan calls for 15 percent of it to be below market rate.

She favors using the property to generate clean energy — either solar panels or wind turbines. Filling the site with clean energy production would do “more to benefit the region environmentally than 2,200 units of housing,” she said.

For now the group that has perhaps the most at stake on election day — property owner Universal Paragon — is remaining quiet. The corporation bought the property 13 years ago for $107 million and has spent the last decade trying to build support for the project, mostly without success. Universal Paragon declined to comment on the ballot measure.

Lacsamana said the Yes on JJ committee, which has raised about $2,000, is not accepting help or campaign contributions from the developer or other pro-development groups such as trade unions.

“It needs to be a local issue decided by the local community,” Lacsamana said.

The No on JJ has raised about $3,000, according to Anja Miller, a longtime Brisbane resident who opposes the plan. She says it’s a door-to-door campaign.

“The people on both sides of this issue have the same love of Brisbane,” Miller said. “We respect each other and understand why we have these differences of opinion. There is a lot of community spirit behind both yes and no in this debate.”

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