Seizing on a string of reports questioning the economic viability of the Atlantic Yards project, hundreds of residents and a handful of elected officials are expected at a rally Saturday calling on Governor Paterson to step in and halt all demolition related to the $4 billion plan.

“There is tremendous uncertainty about the future of the project,” Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries said in an interview yesterday. “Myself and several of my colleagues in the state believe under Governor Paterson we have an opportunity for a complete re-evaluation of the size, scope, and definition for the Atlantic Yards project.”

Since becoming governor, Mr. Paterson has been quiet on Atlantic Yards, an 8-million-square-foot development that would create more than 6,000 apartments, office space, and an arena for the Nets basketball team on 22 acres, near the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues in Brooklyn. The plan required the state to exercise eminent domain, a process that Mr. Paterson opposed when he was a state senator.

The original Atlantic Yards proposal pledged 2,250 “moderate income” residential units, but a number of critics are now questioning whether the affordable housing will be built.

A spokesman for Forest City Ratner, Loren Riegelhaupt, said all facets of the plan, including the affordable housing, were moving forward and that the company expects to break ground on the arena later this year. “Nothing has changed. We are going to build all of the Atlantic Yards and all of the affordable housing. Any rumors that things have changed are flat-out wrong,” he said.

Mr. Riegelhaupt also warned that any delays would hurt the community. “Any slowdown in our construction phase will only result in the delay of the affordable housing and the jobs we are trying to create with this project,” he said.

Following an acknowledgement a month ago that the plan was delayed, developer Bruce Ratner and his company have been forced to address a series of questions about the project’s viability.

Yesterday Mr. Ratner denied a report in the Newark Star-Ledger that the owner of the New Jersey Devils, Jeffrey Vanderbeek, and Mayor Cory Booker of Newark were trying to assemble investors to buy the Nets and move the basketball team to Newark from the Izod Center in the Meadowlands.

“The team is very simply not for sale and any stories that suggest or insinuate that we would be interested in listening to those conversations are flat out false,” Mr. Ratner said in a statement. “We are focused on breaking ground on the Barclays Center in Brooklyn later this year and building all of Atlantic Yards, nothing else.”

The Star-Ledger report came a day after a group of 13 residents whose apartments face condemnation filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. The suit alleges that the agreement between the Empire State Development Corporation and Forest City Ratner violates the state’s eminent domain law, which says seized property must be offered back to its prior holder if it is not “materially improved” in 10 years.

The agreement reached with the ESDC gives Forest City at least 12 years to complete the first phase of the project and an unspecified amount of time for the second phase.

“Something is up. If the project was a done deal, why are they now talking about selling the Nets and why is the city funding an agreement allowing Ratner to build a project that is much smaller with far fewer affordable units with no penalty?” a spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, Daniel Goldstein, said. “That is why we need a time-out.”

Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, and City Council members Letitia James, David Yassky, and Tony Avella also are expected to participate in Saturday’s rally.