Noah Berger for The Bay Citizen

The Golden Gateway Tennis & Swim Club, site of a proposed condo development, is pictured on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011, in San Francisco

Even after Peskin was termed out of office in 2009, he and the Telegraph Hill Dwellers, a group of outspoken North Beach residents, vigorously fought 555 Washington. On the day of the vote in May 2010, Peskin lobbied out of the offices of his former colleagues.

Today, Peskin, who is chairman of the city’s Democratic Party, has seen his influence wane while Brown and Pak enjoy a renaissance.

Brown and Pak — close friends and political allies — helped install Lee as interim mayor in January, outmaneuvering progressives allied with Peskin. That shift at City Hall is translating into an increased pace for development.

Snellgrove, the developer of the 8 Washington project, has assembled a lobbying team that includes several people with close ties to Brown: H. Marcia Smolens, one of the city’s highest-paid lobbyists and a longtime Brown fund-raiser; Karin Carlson Johnston, a lobbyist at  Smolens’s firm, HMS Associates; and her husband, Johnston, who served as Brown’s spokesman.

While the developers deny that Pak is working on the project, she has tried to help indirectly. In 2007, she organized a trip to China for friends and city officials that included Peskin, who was then president of the Board of Supervisors, and Snellgrove, a longtime friend of Brown and Pak.

“He was on the trip she organized and used it as a nonstop 10-day lobbying opportunity,” Peskin said of Snellgrove in an interview. “For 10 days we saw him for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We were taking this whole tour of Macau, and he was tagging along whining about his project for three hours. And we just wanted to see Portuguese architecture.”

Snellgrove declined to comment.

Snellgrove’s representatives told planning department officials several months ago that they had lined up the necessary six votes on the Board of Supervisors to win approval, according to a city official with knowledge of the project. But they suggested that the window might close after the November election because three supervisors were running for other offices and might have to be replaced.

“The message was, ‘We have to get this done with the current board,’ ” the official said.

The project’s progress has presented a political headache for David Chiu, the board president whose district includes 8 Washington Street. “I have heard there are attempts to move this faster through the process and have been surprised because I don’t think we have community support that we need,” Chiu said.

Chiu, who is also running for mayor, said he did not support the project in its current form.

But people familiar with the project said Mr. Chiu is concerned that Mr. Snellgrove’s team has already persuaded another supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi, to provide the crucial sixth vote. Mr. Mirkarimi is running for sheriff. Mr. Snellgrove and others involved in the project collectively contributed more than $2,500 to Mr. Mirkarimi’s campaign.

Mirkarimi said he had not examined the project in depth but would most likely respect Mr. Chiu’s opposition to it.

Johnston denied that the 8 Washington project was speeding through the approvals process, noting that it originated four years ago. In addition, neighborhood groups have filed a lawsuit against the city, arguing that the planning department is illegally raising height limits to accommodate the project, a claim the department denies.

Whatever the fate of 8 Washington, developers like Segal, the investor in the 555 Washington project last year, see greater opportunities for development under a Lee administration.

“The executive branch is more animated on this project than it may have appeared on our project,” Segal said. “It’s a different style.”

This article also appears in the Bay Area edition of The New York Times.