The firm designing a major retail, housing and office complex to be located on Parcel 1B next to the Kennedy School released preliminary plans for the project at a meeting with area residents last night.

The plan called for a retail development of 40,000 square feet, with larger amounts of space devoted to housing and office use.

The plans are "not totally firmed up," John Hall, a spokesman for the site's developers said yesterday.

"We have to get together with the Planning Board in the near future--we don't anticipate much community opposition since we have been working very closely with them," Hall said.

The Parcel 1B development, slated to begin in mid-1981, has been a battleground for more than five years. Community opponents ended a series of court challenges this fall after the developer agreed to drastically trim the size of the retail portion of the complex.

David C. Sullivan, Cambridge city councilor, last night called the revised plans "a major victory" for nearby neighbors. By reducing the retail area to roughly the same size as the present Galeria complex on Boylston St., the developers will drastically cut traffic and consequently air pollution, Sullivan said.

The revised plans call for a complex of four separate buildings built around a central courtyard that is "open to the sky and visible from both Brattle Square and the J.F.K. Park." There will be two hotel buildings connected by a transparent aboveground tunnel, and greatly expanded office building and condominiums, with shops around the courtyard and underneath the hotel and offices.

A 700-car-parking garage, mostly underground, removes 40 per cent of the surface bulk of the former proposal, Dean Johnson, a member of the Harvard Square Defense Fund who helped review the plans, said yesterday. "Now the plans are much more in character with harvard Square," Johnson added.