Last summer, San Bruno took heat after its City Council unexpectedly killed a 425-unit complex that followed exactly what voters said they wanted built in the area.

The council’s rejection prompted legal threats from housing advocates and pressure from the state to reverse its decision.

Now, the developer is back with a new plan — this one for 600 apartments. Not only does the new plan have more homes, it is taller and has less parking and no grocery store, both key elements the neighborhood had sought at the Mills Park Plaza site, a 5.4-acre parcel at El Camino Real and San Bruno Avenue.

Jamie Choy of Signature Development Group informed San Bruno officials Oct. 22 that while it remains “committed to the project as originally proposed,” it is considering a revised project “designed to comply with California Senate Bill 35,” a 2017 law that allows certain developments to bypass approvals if they meet affordable housing requirements and adhere to certain standards. The new plan was first reported in the San Francisco Business Times.

San Bruno officials said on the city’s website that the revised SB35 project, while providing more housing, “appears to create a greater impact on the existing Mills Park neighborhood than the original project proposal.”

Officials stressed that the alternative has not been submitted yet and that it’s not clear whether the revised project would qualify under the law, which allows for a streamlined approval process for projects in cities that fall short of state-mandated housing construction. The law gives cities 90 days to determine whether a project qualifies and another 90 days to approve it.

The San Bruno case is unusual because the majority of the City Council supports the project, but two of the five council members recused themselves from voting on it because they own property within 1,000 feet of the site. That meant that the project needed all three remaining votes to pass. While Mayor Rico Medina and Councilwoman Laura Davis voted in favor of the project, Councilman Marty Medina voted against it. Marty Medina couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, who sponsored SB35, said the San Bruno case is a textbook example of why the law was needed.

“This is a city where the voters have voted to rezone the area, where voters said that they wanted more housing. A majority of the city councilors supported the project,” he said. “This is an unusual situation in some ways, but there are many different ways projects get stuck for years and years in California. The goal of SB35 is to get projects unstuck in communities that are not meeting their housing goals.”

The possibility that the threat of SB35 would be enough to get the City Council to approve the original plan would be a great outcome, he said.

In addition to SB35, San Bruno officials have to grapple with the possibility that the city will be sued if the project is not approved. Five pro-housing groups signed agreements reserving their right to sue if a deal can’t be made in the next few months. They argue that San Bruno’s failure to approve the project violated state and local laws.

Old and new proposals for San Bruno site Number of units Old plan: 425 units (64 affordable) New plan: 600 units (Approximately half affordable) Height Old plan: 70 feet New plan: 85 feet Parking Old plan: 879 spaces New plan: 480 spaces Retail Old plan: 42,0 00-square-foot grocery store New plan: 1,800 square feet Design Old plan: Step-down design to transition from apartments to nearby single-family homes New plan: No step-down

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Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law — one of the groups weighing a lawsuit — said that the case shows what happens when elected officials spurn developers who have worked extensively with neighbors.

“There is a lot to be said for local control, but localities have been abusing it,” she said. “Here you had a developer who did all the right things — and for what?”

But many San Bruno residents remain opposed to the development, said Simon Mazzola, an attorney who called the original project “a monster” that would overwhelm the single-family enclave and lead to gridlock.

He called the threat to use state law to build a bigger project “unfortunate.”

“It does seem very heavy-handed,” he said. “Instead, let’s make this a real three-way conversation with the developer, the city and the people who live here.”

Rosanne Foust, president of San Mateo County Economic Development Association, a pro-housing group, said it’s unfortunate that the developer was “forced to resort to using SB35 to build the Mills Plaza development.”

“The original project proposal was a win for San Bruno and for San Mateo County,” she said. “It’s even more unfortunate that the lack of political will of one council member had the power to kill a project that would have provided much-needed housing.”

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