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A potential turf war over architectural plans for the plaza adjacent to the Jewish Museum San Francisco has fizzled.

Neighbors say they couldn't be more pleased with the latest landscape design for the plaza near Yerba Buena Gardens that will serve as a welcome mat for all of them.

The San Francisco Redevelopment Commission on Wednesday of last week approved a design by a local architecture firm after the neighbors — Saint Patrick's Catholic Church, the future Mexican Museum and the ANA Hotel — rejected an uncommissioned design by Jewish Museum architect Peter Eisenman.

The Eisenman plan, they said, too prominently featured the Jewish museum as the dominant institution in the plaza and diverted foot traffic away from the others.

While Rabbi Brian Lurie, the museum's CEO, explained that Eisenman's plan was only an idea, neighbors questioned why Jewish museum leaders would try to override an existing plaza design without consulting with them first.

"They learned that common sense dictates that you deal with all your neighbors when you're talking about shared ground," said Mexican Museum trustee Antonio Salazar-Hobson.

Lurie called the donnybrook "a non-issue," contending "there never should have been any concern that we would do something that our neighbors did not [want]."

At the redevelopment commission meeting, agency architect Bill Carney uncovered renderings of a sunken, plum- and palm-tree-lined tile plaza with a European-style water fountain. Gone were Eisenman's sloping entrance and underground tunnel from Mission Street to the Jewish Museum, which sits in an alleyway to the rear of the plaza.

Redevelopment commissioners said the design will complement Yerba Buena Gardens, located across Mission Street, and accommodate one of the most heavily traveled pedestrian walkways in the city.

Salazar-Hobson called the design "a stunning achievement."

"There are fewer palm trees. They've also taken out the grass from in front of our building where the outside dining would be," he said.

Lurie, who was not at the meeting, said, "I'm happier with this plan because everyone is happy with it."

Also absent from the meeting was Saint Patrick's Deacon Virgil Capetti, who later called the design "a compromise." Capetti was still unsure about how high the palm trees, which would sit to the rear of his church, would grow.

The ANA Hotel's assistant general manager, Obaid Afredi, welcomed the palms as just the thing to break a wind tunnel that blasted cold air through the plaza alleyway and onto the hotel's garden patio.

Afredi said, "We are in full support of what the redevelopment agency has designed," but he noted some fine-tuning was still in order.

Other plaza neighbors still had some items on their wish list, too.

Area seniors who inhabit five nearby low-income housing developments want seating areas in the plaza, which would become a community meeting place for them.

Lurie still wonders whether the palm trees will obscure the Jewish Museum and would like to see some grass in an area where the Mexican Museum plans to have outdoor dining.

He also is awaiting word from the redevelopment agency that he can expand the museum plan from 38,000 square feet to 70,000.

Groundbreaking for the plaza is slated for December.

Clifford Graves, former executive director of the redevelopment agency, provided a moment of levity during the meeting when Commissioner Manuel Rosales suggested a contest for naming the plaza.

"We'd like to take on one controversy at a time," Graves joked.