With the Metropolitan Transportation Authority poised to award Tishman Speyer with the chance to develop the 26 acres constituting the Hudson Rail Yards project on Manhattan’s West Side as early as today, the fight now turns to getting approval from the Bloomberg administration and the City Council through the city’s land use review process. Even before today’s scheduled vote by the MTA’s 17-member board of directors, though, administrators and developers are already questioning whether city officials were sufficiently involved in the negotiating process and are asking why the Tishman Speyer bid, which had elicited the most criticism from the community, would likely win out.

As of last night, sources with knowledge of the negotiations said that, barring a last-minute collapse, the MTA would bring the Tishman Speyer proposal to a vote of its board of directors at a meeting today. The plan appears to have won out in a selection process that has lasted eight months. The bid was about $40 million more than that of the joint venture of the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust, according to a number of sources familiar with the negotiations.

A spokesman for the MTA, Jeremy Soffin, declined comment.

The Tishman Speyer plan, designed by architect Helmut Jahn and landscape architect Peter Walker, encompasses 13 million square feet spread across 13 new buildings, including four office towers. The plan calls for more than 10 million square feet of commercial space, around 3 million square feet of residential space, and 1,450 parking spaces.

“Community-wise, when we had our meeting it was the proposal that was the least liked,” the district manager of Community Board 4, Robert Benfatto, said, adding that the main criticism centered on the project’s 10 million square feet of commercial space, which he said was considered excessive. Mr. Benfatto said the community board thought the design of the buildings were “corporate and antiseptic.” He predicted that changes to the plan would almost certainly occur even before it gets to the city planning commission.

Critics say the plan provides a meager amount of housing for low- and middle-income New Yorkers, an issue that has been at the forefront of the Bloomberg administration, and promises to come up in the 2009 mayoral election.

Just before the MTA put out a request for proposals in July, city and state officials pledged to designate up to 20% of the rental units on the site as “affordable” housing.

Tishman Speyer’s plan calls for 3,000 residential units, of which 300 — or 10% — would be dedicated to “affordable” housing, according to a real estate source familiar with the bids. The Vornado-Durst offer — the likely runner-up — included 5,500 units of residential, 600 of which were “affordable.” Other bids were made by Extell Development Co., the Related Cos., and Brookfield Properties.

A real estate executive who has closely followed the process wondered how city officials, specifically the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, who represents the district and is said to be considering a run for mayor, would accept 300 units of “affordable” housing being built on the largest swath of undeveloped land in Manhattan.

“They are going with the plan that has the least in common with what the city is looking for. It’s just sort of strange. The community just wants there to be a neighborhood there. This is absolutely the worst-case scenario for what the community wanted and is going to be a big challenge to get through,” the real estate executive, who declined to be identified, said.

A spokesman for Ms. Quinn said: “We look forward to reviewing the plans for Hudson Yards the moment a deal is reached with the MTA.”

Representatives from Mayor Bloomberg’s office involved in the negotiations included a former deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff, and the director of the New York City Office of Management and Budget, Mark Page.

A city official who declined to speak for attribution before a deal was officially announced did not fault the MTA for leaning toward the Tishman Speyer bid, but predicted the city’s land use review process could have an effect on what ultimately gets designed and built.

“When you look at the mix of uses, that is something that is more of a city issue than a seller issue. So what the MTA wants and what the city wants are generally pretty well-aligned, but the mix is something we and the City Council are more focused on than the MTA. There will be more engagement and involvement with the community but they always want something,” the city official said. If the developer were pushed to increase the amount of “affordable” housing in the bid in order to secure passage through the Bloomberg-controlled Planning Commission and the City Council, it is unclear if the developer would alter its bid for the right to develop the rail yards, sources said.