The City Council postponed voting on a proposal to rezone the Broadway Triangle site at its November 30th stated meeting, a surprising turn of events that has fueled speculation the city’s redevelopment plan is running into opposition inside the council.

The full council vote to rezone a 50-acre parcel of largely vacant land in Williamsburg for residential development has the backing of the mayor and was expected to pass.

Instead, legislators - and communities in North and Central Brooklyn affected by the proposal - must wait at least one week longer.

The council’s Land Use Committee is required to vote on the plan by December 8, one day before the full council’s next meeting, where the rezoning could come up again for a approval. (A subcommittee was set to vote on the plan December 2, after this paper goes to press).

The postponement leaves opponents of the plan little time to act.

In an interview the day after the stalled vote, Councilwoman Diana Reyna, whose district is near the site and has been a vocal opponent, said she is pushing Council Speaker Christine Quinn to join opponents in calling for the city’s Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to scrap its plan and go back to the drawing board.

Reyna said Quinn has expressed frustration with the project’s planning process, and told her in conversations she would “communicate that to the mayor as well.”

Now it remains to be seen whether the Bloomberg Administration will back down from a plan to build 1,850 new apartments - 46 percent of them affordable - on the site.

The Broadway Triangle Community Coalition (BTCC), an opposition group, believes that number is not nearly enough to address the affordable housing shortage facing the communities of Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The group has an alternative rezoning plan that would allow for nearly 5,000 new units, three quarters of which would be set aside as affordable housing.

Opponents of the rezoning also contend the planning process has favored two well-connected community-based organization that would stand to benefit from the project.

“The [planning] process has no integrity,” said Reyna. “That’s been the problem here from the very beginning.”

Reyna said the project was a prime example of the Bloomberg Administration’s disregard for the political process, as well as for neighborhoods like the ones she represents.

She suggested the mayor’s campaign slogan - “Progress, not politics” - should be reversed. In the case of the Broadway Triangle, she said, “It is politics, not progress.”

By opposing the project, said Reyna, “I want to make sure the mayor recognizes I’m not irrelevant. Our community is not irrelevant.”

Still, she acknowledged convincing the city to abandon or modify the existing rezoning proposal in one week will be difficult. “Time is against us,” she said.

Marty Needelman, BTCC’s attorney, said at the very least the postponed vote buys extra time to negotiate. “It certainly is a good sign, rather than pushing through and voting on it,” he said.