Opponents of Bruce Ratner’s proposed Atlantic Yards project have added celebrity clout to their cause in recent weeks, but their best hopes for scuttling plans to transform 22 acres of Brooklyn may hinge on a new administration in Albany.

The proposal is in the midst of the state land use review process, and a preliminary environmental impact statement is due next month. The Empire State Development Corporation says the timeline allows for construction to begin by the end of the year, but any delay could push the project into the hands of a new governor.

Neither the Democratic front-runner, Eliot Spitzer, nor his Republican opponent, John Faso, have stated a position on the current Atlantic Yards proposal, and neither campaign provided one yesterday.

Whether the coalition Develop – Don’t Destroy Brooklyn can succeed in forcing a rescaling of the Atlantic Yards development is an open question, but some urban planning scholars say they have a chance. An urban planning professor at Harvard University, Susan Fainstein, said the support of the next governor would be key, but she predicted that the project would be altered. “The huge number of residential and commercial buildings are likely to be shrunk,” she said.

Ms. Fainstein said opponents in Brooklyn had a better shot because of their wealth relative to other groups that have protested development projects in the city. “Develop – Don’t Destroy Brooklyn represents a middle- and upper-class constituency, rather than a bunch of poor people in the Bronx,” she said.

After more than two years of railing against Mr. Ratner’s $3.5 billion proposal to build high-rise towers surrounding an arena for the New Jersey Nets on the Atlantic Yards site, the group last month enlisted a star-studded advisory board to gain more traction for its fight.

In a first salvo of the new celebrity strategy, an author of best-selling books, Jonathan Lethem, wrote a 2,300-word article attacking the project for Slate, the online magazine. Calling the proposal a “Trojan horse,” he wrote in an open letter to Mr. Ratner’s lead architect, Frank Gehry, that his design for an “ill-conceived and out-of-scale flotilla of skyscrapers” would be “more suitable for some Sunbelt boomtown.”

“It’s a nightmare for Brooklyn, one that, if built, would cause irreparable damage to the quality of our lives and, I’d think, to your legacy,” Mr. Lethem wrote.

Mr. Lethem’s words drew a scathing response from Mr. Ratner’s development firm, Forest City Ratner.

“Mr. Lethem is rightly acknowledged as a gifted writer,” a company spokesman, Joseph DePlasco, said. “Unfortunately, however, his research skills seem to be lacking, and his trite and embarrassing name-calling doesn’t serve him or the borough he claims to love well.” Mr. Gehry did not return requests for comment yesterday.