Site work for Southtown is moving steadily forward even as opponents of the development plan - assisted on a pro-bono basis by a major international law firm - prepare to appeal the judge's decision that rejected their challenge last year.

With the gates closing Thursday afternoon on several service roads and the traffic pattern changing, the contours of the long-awaited housing project, newly surrounded by chain link and plywood fencing, finally came into clear focus.

Vincent Arcuri, senior vice president of AMEC Construction Management Inc., the company that is managing the project, said the blue-painted plywood wall would shield only the first phase of the project, the three buildings being constructed immediately south of Rivercross by the Hudson and Related companies. The rest of the fencing will be mesh. The three buildings, the first of nine in a development that will eventually add about 2,000 apartments to Roosevelt Island, will mainly house personnel and their families from East Side medical institutions.

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Arcuri said the work, delayed somewhat by snowstorms, is on course for the start of foundation work anywhere between April and June. In the meantime, bids are going out for the construction of a sports field north of the Tramway station to replace the soccer and baseball field located between Rivercross and Eastwood on the north, and the old Central Nurses Residence (CNR), which is being demolished, on the south. Work on the new sports field should begin in April, Arcuri said.

Scott Weiss, AMEC's project manager, has set up shop at the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) office and is working full-time on Southtown. Approximately 20 workers, encompassing four trades, are on the site now, a number Weiss said would grow to about 40 during the demolition work.

Despite the flurry of activity, the Roosevelt Islanders for Responsible Southtown Development (RIRSD), a group that sued RIOC to block its go-ahead for the Hudson/Related plan, is not giving up its legal fight to force changes in the development plan.

RIRSD lost the first round last July, when a trial judge, Justice Harold Tompkins of the State Supreme Court, threw out its case, along with a similar challenge filed by Attorney Robert Chira, an Island resident representing a long-standing group, the Alternative Southtown Design Committee.

Steve Marcus, chair of RIRSD's steering committee, said: "This is not a done deal, and just because there's a wall does not mean these guys can destroy our open spaces. We have to take heart and keep on fighting."

Marcus is guardedly optimistic about his group's chances of stopping the current plan of development because it has in its corner a major New York-based law firm, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, LLP, which is undertaking the case for no fee. The company is one of the world's largest law firms, with more than 750 lawyers practicing in 14 cities in the United States and in 10 other countries. LeBoeuf intends to file its case with the State court's appellate division before the end of February, in an effort to secure a hearing in the May-June time frame.

Marcus said he did not want to disclose the main points of the appeal, and he acknowledged that, in general, the chances of an appeal's succeeding are less than 50 percent. But, he added, "We know in our case we have some very good reasons to believe that our appeal will be more successful than most" because of what he described as "egregious errors" in the trial-court decision, including the quickly-challenged assertion that RIRSD had failed to file its objection in a timely manner.

Marcus said there was no "inside trading" or special connections that allowed the Island group to secure pro-bono representation in the appeal. "We didn't know anybody at the firm," he said.

Linda Heimer, a member of RIRSD who was instrumental in securing the services of LeBoeuf, Lamb, said she went through the Manhattan-based New York Lawyers for the Public Interest to make a case for RIRSD's appeal. The public-interest organization litigates issues relating to health, mental health, disability rights and environmental justice, and refers large public-interest projects to member law firms through a pro-bono clearinghouse of law firms.

Heimer said the residents had to persuade the lawyers' group that the Southtown case was in the public interest. She said that in Tompkins' ruling, the Islanders "never got our day in court." But beyond that, she said, the group had to show that Roosevelt Island, because of its demographic characteristics, was deserving of pro-bono treatment. Heimer used figures from the 1990 census to establish that the case was not simply a not-in-my-backyard matter of wealthy people trying to block development. (In 1990, 43 percent of the households on Roosevelt Island had income below $35,000, for example.)

Heimer said an "endless" amount of research has gone into the law suit - in libraries, at the RIOC office, City offices and archives - an effort that has continued with LeBoeuf's acceptance of the case.

And the work has been expensive. As Marcus said, "the loser pays," which meant that the costs of preparing documents for the appeal rested with RIRSD.

Margie Smith, a member of the steering committee, said that, in addition to legal fees, RIRSD spent a portion of the money collected in Island fund-raising to reproduce 20 sets of documents of 1,600 pages each for the appeal proceedings. She said the group also had to pay an environmentalist who did a shadow analysis of the effect of construction on the Blackwell House, the old farmhouse north of the construction site, to show that the shadows cast by the new buildings would differ from those covered by an Environmental Impact Statement on an earlier version of the project.

Smith said "it breaks my heart" to observe the blue wall and the other work done so far on Southtown. She complained that RIOC had not taken her group seriously as litigants. RIRSD has objected to the configuration of buildings and roadways in the Southtown plan and to the manner in which it will be constructed.

The engineers have a different viewpoint, both practically and aesthetically. Weiss, the project manager, is also a primary contact person, the one whose name is listed on the AMEC notices posted on Main Street and in other locations. "In general, the comments from the community have been limited," he said, responding to an e-mail question from The WIRE regarding Islanders' reaction so far. "I think the construction bulletins help the community know exactly what is occurring and when."

He added, "I do agree that this project has a positive impact on the community as a whole. Hudson has developed a well-designed plan for Southtown. Although the CNR has a lot of history, certainly the new commons area where residents can come to relax and enjoy a fantastic view of the East River and New York's East Side has great appeal to me."

Their engineers' obligation, of course, is to get the project built, and Arcuri said that AMEC - formerly known as Morse Diesel - is really functioning as the program manager for all the residents of Roosevelt Island in pushing for completion of the project.

AMEC is employed by RIOC. As Arcuri said, "We keep driving the developers to perform. We're there to ensure that they keep going and do it the right way."

At this stage, one of the main jobs is demolition of the old nurses residence. Arcuri said that crews are completing the interior cleanout, taking out doors and other movable glass or wood items. When that work is done, he said, the building would be taken down "brick by brick" from west to east.

The backhoes that were on the site of the old sports field in recent weeks were digging to confirm the information gained through test borings and to further ascertain the location of piping and other features in an area that once served as a quarry. In those days, the Island was a home mainly for the poor, the imprisoned and the insane.