Residents of SoHo are pledging to take the city to court if the Department of Sanitation’s plans to build a 150-foot-high garage and fueling center just blocks from the Holland Tunnel move forward.

At a City Planning Commission hearing today, resident groups are expected to say the proposal to build a 427,000-square-foot facility at Spring and Washington streets would worsen what is already substandard air quality in the area and create additional environmental and health concerns, as well as increase street congestion.

“We would prefer that calmer heads prevail, but we are prepared to go to court,” a spokesman for the nearby 1 million-square-foot St. John’s office building, Michael Kramer, said yesterday. Mr. Kramer is working in concert with the local Community Board 2 and an opposition group that calls itself This Deal Stinks, all of which are expected to testify today.

The Bloomberg administration wants to use the site, which is currently occupied by the United Parcel Service, to consolidate garbage trucks that service districts 1, 2, and 5 — roughly encompassing Manhattan between Midtown and Canal Street — and turn a smaller garage just to the south into a truck wash and refueling depot. The depot would store 13,000 gallons of fuel and oil and would service a number of other city agencies.

UPS’s offices would be relocated to the ground floor.

The western edge of SoHo has experienced a renaissance over the last several years and now boasts a number of high-end retail stores and a several high-profile residential condominiums, including Philip Johnson’s Urban Glass House at Washington and Spring streets and the $82.5 million, 14-story 505 Greenwich condominium building. The Trump SoHo, a condo hotel, is rising nearby, at Spring and Varick streets.

The upcoming fight highlights the challenge the city faces in trying to find real estate in Manhattan to house the infrastructure needed to perform necessary services such as sanitation. The new facility would help the department comply with its legal obligation to vacate Chelsea’s Gansevoort Peninsula sanitation.

In a statement, a spokesman for the Department of Sanitation, Keith Mellis, said the department is seeking a building that would house 62 collection trucks, 15 dump trucks, and nine salt spreaders.

“The building would allow the DSNY to vacate existing facilities that are within the grounds of the Hudson River Park. DSNY currently fuels other city agency vehicles at all of our facilities citywide as long as refueling doesn’t interfere with department operational needs/requirements,” Mr. Mellis said.

A local restaurant owner and community board member, Philip Mouquinho, said the area is already overtaxed with car and truck congestion, which he says has resulted in some of the worst air quality in the entire Northeast.

“We are already burdened with the one district garage here, the UPS facility that has 150 trucks, the Holland Tunnel, and the maintenance trucks that are on Pier 40. On top of that congestion and pollution, you are going to give us two more district garages with a 30,000-gallon fuel dump? It’s insanity,” he said.

The project falls within the district of the City Council speaker, but a spokeswoman for Christine Quinn said she has yet to take a position.

Manhattan’s president, Scott Stringer, opposes the plan. He says that while a new garage on the Lower West Side to serve districts 1 and 2 made sense, the department should find an alternate site for trucks that serve District 5 in Midtown.

A spokesman for UPS, Norman Black, said the company’s cooperation was contingent upon the sanitation department’s ability to get the project through the city’s land use review process.