The controversy centers on a six-acre, pie-shaped piece of land at the corner of Taylor Boulevard and Pleasant Hill Road that has been the site for several failed development plans since the late 1970s. The most recent scheme, for a 101-unit, upscale retirement home, was shelved for 10 years even though the county approved it in 1990.

Residents thought the plan had fallen by the wayside until Sun Care Systems, of Walnut Creek, began to move ahead with the project with Hasseltine as its representative. The project pits irate local residents against Hasseltine, a longtime proponent of development who last made headlines in November for his involvement in Antioch's city council race.

Hasseltine is director of PROPAC, a political action committee funded by developers. The group spent $13,551 in a last-minute, negative mailer designed to defeat Antioch city council candidate Reggie Moore. Moore won despite the flyer, which unfairly accused him of possessing property stolen by his son. Hasseltine did not return several calls to his office and his home.

Resident Jodie Russi has hired a lawyer to fight the project and its well-connected representative. "[Hasseltine] has his connections so the developers hired him to bulldoze us,'' she says. The neighborhood has grown dramatically over the last decade and is no longer a suitable place for the project, Russi says. Resident Mark Kimball adds that the project has also changed and thereby must be re-evaluated.

Instead of a upscale retirement home, the current plans call for a complex that will house people with dementia and other serious health problems. But residents were most angry that county officials did not inform them of critical developments in the project.

The county has also failed to address drainage and other problems in the area, residents claim, and this latest project will only make them worse. However, a county official says that the project will create no new additional drainage problems for the community, and the supervisors gave the project a green light to begin grading.

Before applying for the building permit now, the developer must first solve a host of problems and hold a meeting with the residents, who will have an opportunity to appeal the permit.