Thirty years after the most comprehensive development plan for South Richmond died in a crush of political and community opposition, key players in one of the borough's most controversial issues gathered last night for a discussion in the archives department at the College of Staten Island.

It was a tense and passionate reunion of veterans from both sides of the pitched battle over how to plan for South Richmond -- long before it became known as the fastest-growing place in the state. The South Richmond Plan itself might have been forgotten long ago in an archive, were it not for the fact that a lack of planning is still one of the problems most often cited by Staten Islanders.

The South Richmond Plan grew out of a study completed by the Rouse Co. at the request of Mayor John V. Lindsay. Rouse, which developed the planned community of Columbia, Md., and which operates the Staten Island Mall, examined South Richmond, where nearly 45 percent of the land at the time was owned by the city and where the biggest potential for growth existed in the post-Verrazano-Narrows Bridge era.

Rouse outlined a scenario for planned growth that included creating a variety of mixed-used housing across nearly 7,000 acres and recommended landfilling 3,000 acres of waterfront to build apartment buildings along the water's edge. It also called for land-banking city-owned sites and, later, creating a public housing corporation to oversee development.

Retired judge and West Brighton resident Holt Meyer, a panelist at last night's forum, served as director of the Office of Staten Island Planning under Lindsay.

"We don't know," Meyer said, when asked if he thought South Richmond would be better off today under the plan he once advocated. "What I think we can say is that we would not be any worse off than we are now on the South Shore."

While the Lindsay administration supported the plan, it was denounced by most real estate industry leaders and many other elected officials in the borough.

Daniel Master Sr., a Realtor and longtime member of the Conservative Party, said he worried about the Rouse Co. projections for population density -- as much as 450,000 people living below Richmond Avenue -- and provisions in the plan to condemn property and turn city land over to a public development corporation.

Master was so opposed to the South Richmond Plan that he ran on the Conservative line against state Sen. John Marchi during the 1972 election.

"We've been vindicated," he said last night. "If this had gone through, it would have been a total disaster."

After an exhaustive study, the Republican Marchi came out in favor of the plan and twice introduced legislation in the Senate to pass the plan. The bill made it through the Senate but failed in the Assembly.

David Jaffe, counsel to Marchi, said the majority of complaints the senator's office handles today are about traffic, bad roads and crowded schools.

"We know what we have now ... and apparently nobody is terribly happy," Jaffe said.