While city and county leaders debate turf issues, Keith Rogal is marching ahead with plans for the largest residential-industrial development in Napa County history — bar none.

In slow-growth Napa, neighborhoods commonly go to war over subdivisions of a few dozen homes. In the county, a single misplaced residence can trigger a donnybrook.

Rogal’s plans for the 152-acre former Napa Pipe site, located just outside the city’s southern boundary, are orders of magnitude greater: 3,200 dwelling units, a half-million square feet of industrial space, a 150-room hotel.

Plans for the property include a riverfront promenade and plaza, multi-story townhomes, and preservation of elements tying the site to its history as a ship-building and metal fabrication facility.

The county is about to begin considering Rogal’s ambitious development plans, which have not yet been analyzed or tempered by the fire of public hearings.

City officials are not pleased. They fear the county could end up appending to Napa a new urban center with the population of a Calistoga or St. Helena without fully addressing city issues.

Rogal said he was not trying to pit city against county. The Napa Pipe site is outside the city limits, so his investment group, Napa Redevelopment Partners, has no choice but to seek development approval from the county, he said.

Whatever jurisdiction decides his project’s fate, Rogal rejects the idea that he is proposing a new city for Napa County.

“There is no desire or intention or plan that this is a city,” he said. “What makes sense is that this be a compact, high-density neighborhood of the type that Napa hasn’t had before.”

Think Browns Valley, but at 35-40 units per acre, a far more compact neighborhood, said Rogal, whose previous Napa County project was the high-end Carneros Inn development a few miles away on Highway 12/121.

While city officials may be anxious that such a large, complex development could be built west of Napa Valley Corporate Park without their approval, Rogal said community concerns will be addressed by environmental and fiscal impact studies.

He can virtually promise “that the city will not be fiscally burdened by development outside its borders,” Rogal said.

“What the residents will require ... is that their public service needs be met: fire, police, ambulance, schools, road maintenance. Those things can be handled by the county,” he said.

Rogal will likely ask the city to provide water to his project, which would require a four-fifths vote of the City Council. If that didn’t work out, he would pursue other options, he said.

How many people would live at Rogal’s new waterfront community? These will be smallish condos attracting mostly young adults and older empty nesters, Rogal said. At an average of 1.5 people per unit, Napa Pipe would be home to 4,800 people.

This is substantially less than if the units had typical Napa County occupancies of more than two people per unit. Under such densities, the population could be 6,000 or more, making Napa Pipe larger than any Napa Valley city except Napa, with 77,000 residents, and American Canyon, with 15,000.

Rogal is offering to pay for a consultant who would work full-time for the city to make sure that its issues are fully addressed by county studies. There is no reason this project can’t be win-win for the county and city, regardless of who runs the approval process, he said.

The county wants to preserve agriculture, yet be able to meet state and regional housing requirements. His project will do this, while making better use of a former heavy industrial site that has toxics issues, he said.

Residential development is generally a financial loser for the city, which is struggling to raise new revenues to boost services to residents, Rogal said.

The Napa Pipe residents would shop and dine in Napa, boosting city sales tax revenues, Rogal said. If the project were to contract for city services, Napa would receive full compensation, he said.

Although his development would have 50,000 square feet of stores and restaurants, this is a relatively small amount — the equivalent of a neighborhood shopping center — and would not compete in a significant way with city businesses, he said.

Rogal asks that city and county leaders value his project for the needed housing it will provide for people who work in Napa but have to commute from out of county.

Some 13,000 people commute to work here, many because there is not affordable housing in Napa, Rogal said.

There are 10,000 jobs within a short drive from his project, Rogal said, with the south county’s industrial and commercial base still growing.

“It doesn’t make sense that you have all this job growth, but you don’t allow anyone to live by the jobs,” he said. “The essence of a good community is you have a balance of jobs and housing.”

Of the 3,200 units, 640 would be set aside for low and moderate income buyers, he said. The rest, because of their reduced square footage, would be less expensive than the big homes that now dominate Napa County’s new housing market, he said.

A moral argument can be made for his project and its housing benefits, Rogal said. To kill his project is to say “your kids aren’t welcome here, your workers aren’t welcome here.”