Suddenly Brisbane, a tiny hillside town with few more than 4,000 residents, has become the center of a rip-roaring Bay Area controversy.

The Brisbane City Council is meeting Thursday night to vote on a proposal to develop the long-dormant 684-acre Baylands open space. That’s the simple part.

Conventional wisdom is that the council will approve the “community alternative” plan, which calls for over 8 million square feet of commercial-industrial construction and not a single unit of housing.

With the Bay Area in the midst of a housing crisis, the no-housing option has set off howls of protest. A caravan of San Francisco housing advocates will travel to the meeting to complain, and there are now threats of a lawsuit from the Bay Area Council.

The residents of Brisbane, however, appear unmoved. They’ve fought off attempts at development before and don’t intend to let outsiders dictate housing policy.

As Mayor Cliff Lentz said earlier this week: “Local land-use policy is just that. It is local. It’s going to be up to Brisbane to decide if housing should go up.”

Meanwhile, this week, San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim suggested annexing the property and making it part of San Francisco. That was not well received in San Mateo County, where Brisbane is located.

Adrienne Tissier, who represents Brisbane on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, noted that Kim is running for state Senate in District 11, which includes part of San Mateo County, though not Brisbane.

“I have to say it was pretty disingenuous,” Tissier said. “She’s running to represent San Mateo County and now she’s going to dismantle it.”

Tissier would like to explore another idea, in which San Mateo County annexes the site and develops it with a mix of commercial and residential properties without Brisbane.

And Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, says the state Constitution supports the idea of two governing bodies — like the San Francisco and San Mateo County boards of supervisors — redrawing the county boundaries.

So if the Baylands site was given over to San Mateo County, there could be a mutual agreement between the two bodies to make Baylands part of San Francisco County.

Whew. That’s a lot of moving parts. But there is one undeniable truth — nothing will happen unless Brisbane agrees. And don’t hold your breath.

Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, dealt with the town back in the ’90s, when he was trying to help the 49ers find a spot for a new stadium. The Baylands looked perfect: close to Highway 101, a Caltrain station already in place and near the city.

“It was the option that made the most sense,” he said. “But it quickly became clear there was no way. Brisbane would block it.”

This, critics say, is even less defensible. Brisbane is apparently happy to accept the industrial and commercial development — and all the tax revenue — but doesn’t want the less-profitable housing.

The City Council knows that residents will vigorously oppose a development plan proposed by Universal Paragon Corp., which owns most of Baylands. It would include 4,434 homes, condos and apartments next to the commercial buildings.

Granted, it would more than double the amount of housing in the city, but Tissier, and others, say it doesn’t make sense to build a huge commercial center and expect employees to commute in and out.

“Brisbane wants to take all the gravy and none of the responsibility,” she said. “You’re depending on people taking public transit, which they won’t. You know what 101 is like any time of the day. You just create gridlock.”

Lazarus said he doesn’t understand why Brisbane officials think housing would be worse than an influx of thousands of workers.

“This is bad public land policy for political reasons,” he said. “They need to fix it.”

But how? If Brisbane won’t play ball, how can they be compelled to do the right thing?

“I’ve asked a couple of land-use lawyers to see if we have standing to file a lawsuit,” Wunderman said. “We’re definitely looking at it. It is such a blatant dereliction of public responsibility that something has to give.”

There’s talk that the state Legislature should step in and enact guidelines that would require a certain amount of housing — at all income levels — for any commercial development. Of course, that could take years.

So here we stand, a huge tract of developable land standing idle, skyrocketing housing costs and little Brisbane in the center of it all.

“It seems odd that something so small can stand in the way of something so big,” Wunderman said. “This is a great example of what is not working in the Bay Area.”

C.W. Nevius is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His columns appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cwnevius