With the battle over rezoning in Riverside—a fight centered around the University’s ability to build in the neighborhood along the Charles—entering its final weeks, Harvard representatives unveiled new, scaled-down plans for University-owned sites last night.

But the city council, which must vote on new zoning before an Oct. 28 deadline, attacked the designs as an audience of Riverside neighbors scoffed and snorted.

Riverside residents, often citing their bitter hatred of Harvard’s Peabody Terrace and Mather Tower, have fought the University’s plans to build for years.

More than three years ago, when Harvard introduced a plan to build a modern art museum on the Memorial Drive plot currently home to Mahoney’s Garden Center, the residents objected vehemently. They created a study committee to rezone the entire neighborhood—with a particular eye towards a few Harvard-owned plots.

The neighbors’ plan, commonly known as the Carlson petition, would cut the maximum allowed height on the Mahoney’s plot, for example, from 120’ to 24’.

But the planning board, the city-appointed group of architects and planners that looks at all zoning proposals, called the Carlson petition “punitive” and submitted a petition that allowed for taller buildings and more negotiation.

Now both plans sit on the city council’s agenda and will expire on Oct. 28—just one week before election day.

Meanwhile, last summer the University ditched the art museum plan, offering up an alternative idea to build graduate student housing on the site instead—a proposal that the neighbors have also largely rejected.

The plan Harvard showed last night—including more open space and less dense buildings, as well as underground parking—had been drastically changed.

Arguing that by building more housing for graduate students, the University will take pressure off the tight Cambridge housing market, Harvard officials also unveiled plans for graduate student housing on University-owned sites deeper in the residential neighborhood.

The proposals also included voluntary affordable housing rentals and—as a sort of peace offering—10 moderate-income houses for sale elsewhere in Cambridge.

But the changes were still not enough for at least six members of the city council, who took the opportunity after the University presented to lambaste the timing of the proposals, the cost of the parking, the shadows of the buildings and even the posters that the architects used.

The most common complaint was that Harvard, rather than making true progress in negotiations, was offering too little, too late.

“This is a weird dynamic tonight,” said Councillor Marjorie Decker, after Harvard made its presentation. “I feel like we’re discussing a whole new petition. This is sort of a Harvard petition.”

Several residents applauded.