In a large pocket of Hayes Valley lies an abandoned, fenced-off set of buildings from the New Deal era, which once housed SF State. The lot will be transformed into housing and shops through the eradication of an historical landmark.

Over a year ago, Save the Laguna Street Campus, a nonprofit organization, filed a public interest lawsuit against San Francisco in hopes of conserving the historic buildings that reside within the site, according to Cynthia Servetnick, an activist in the group.

The goal of the lawsuit, according to Servetnick, was to challenge the Board of Supervisors' final decision in 2008 that called for a "mixed" zoning of 55 Laguna St., meaning the area will be used for commercial, public and private use.

However, her organization lost, and they are currently in the appeals process.

Now, A.F. Evans Development, in conjunction with the Market-Octavia Plan, is spending $100 million to create commercial and housing units, along with a community center. The development company plans to have the site finished by 2012, according to Ruthy Bennett, Evans' project manager.

The Market-Octavia Plan is meant to preserve the historical landmarks on the site while creating growth for businesses and housing. The plan is primarily concerned with a neighborhood "imbalance" in housing and service needs, according to the San Francisco Planning Department.

"It's been in public use for over 150 years," Servetnick said. "The Board of Supervisors made the wrong decision in zoning."

Her group's main mission is to preserve the public use and historic resources of the Laguna Street campus, she added.

UC Berkeley, which operated the space as an extension campus for decades, awarded A.F. Evans the right to build 450 units of market-rate housing on the campus in 2005, following the UC's abandonment of the campus, according to Servetnick.

"We think housing, especially market-rate housing, can be built anywhere, but this campus is unique architecturally and from a land use standpoint," Servetnick said.

"The UC doesn't care," she said. "They've always wanted to sell it and make money off of it."

The 5.8 acre site, surrounded by Laguna, Buchanan, Haight and Herman Streets, has been an active area of San Francisco since the Gold Rush era, according to Helene Whitson, an archivist emeritus at SF State.

She said that a Protestant orphanage occupied the lot during the 1800s and after the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco Normal School moved to the Laguna Street location.

In the early 1950s, San Francisco Normal School changed its name to San Francisco State University and administrators considered moving its campus to the University's current location near Lake Merced, according to Whitson.

"The neighborhood is full of professional people; working class people," she said. "Why can't this site continue to be what it was? it was designed for the public."

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, whose district encompasses the Laguna Street campus, said his constituents in Hayes Valley have voiced concern over the mixed use project.

"We don't want a suburb in Hayes Valley," he said. "We want to see something with merit that will benefit the people who live there."

Meanwhile, Servetnick said she is concerned over the ramifications of zoning the site for mixed use.

"We want to see the historic district maintained," she said, speaking on behalf of the city's historically recognized buildings in the lot. "This project will destroy them."

A.F. Evans wants to demolish Middle Hall and a section of Richardson Hall because they would cost too much to retrofit, Sarah Zahn, a former project manager, said.

Whitson said many of the existing buildings on the campus were built during the New Deal era using Spanish colonial architecture along with Works Progress Administration artists and contractors.

"There's wonderful artwork there," Whitson said. She said Maxine Albro, the designer behind San Francisco's Coit Tower and a protégé of Diego Rivera, created a mosaic from marble left over from the city's 1915 World's Fair, which can be found in Woods Hall's entry on Buchanan and Haight Streets.

She added concerns about the community's need for a place to be educated and how the site should be transformed into a learning center.

"I can imagine people there, and being taught and being the future of California," Whitson said. "That place has had such an impact on California, and it serves the needs of the people."