PROVIDENCE — City Council leaders expect that the Comprehensive Plan, which has faced opposition from industrial interests and from a coalition of neighborhood groups, will receive its first passage tonight when it goes before the full council.

Council President Peter S. Mancini said he expects there is enough support on the council to push the plan through. Recent modifications made during committee meetings have assuaged the fears of several council members, he said.

“I think it’s going to go through. I think most people think there’s been a lot of work done,” Mancini said.

“Some council people do have concerns as to whether we should do an interim plan, but I think we have made enough changes to satisfy most of the concerns,” he said.

The plan is a dramatic reworking of the city’s planning rules and its long-term vision for development, with sections on land use, environmental sustainability and transportation, among many others. It has been under review in various formats for almost two years. Once adopted, it is expected to lead to zoning changes, and the introduction of new concepts like jobs-only districts.

The plan has faced opposition from industrial businesses along the northern part of Allens Avenue, where a change from industrial-only uses to mixed-use development is planned. They say that the introduction of residents to what they call the “working waterfront” will herald the end of the veteran industrial businesses there, which include an oil terminal and a shipyard.

At the same time, some council members and neighborhood groups have pressed for a delay in adopting the plan.

The adoption process is structured in stages: this fall, the city intends to approve an interim Comprehensive Plan that would make major changes to the city’s overarching planning goals, and then each neighborhood would be examined in detail over the next two years. When the neighborhood reviews are completed in 2009, the city would revise the Comprehensive Plan, and make zoning changes in the individual neighborhoods.

But some have expressed concerns that the neighborhoods will be shortchanged by the process.

Mayor David N. Cicilline has, to this point, let his planning staff and council allies manage the debate, but yesterday he weighed in on the plan and why he wants the plan adopted now, and updated later, as the planning staff has long suggested.

He stressed that the controls built into the plan will ensure that no local zoning changes will occur until the neighborhood plans are finished, and said that this is a critical time for Providence to have a strong plan in place because of the massive infrastructure changes happening in the city.

“There are very serious dangers if the Comprehensive Plan is not enacted,” Cicilline said, pointing to the possibility that the state will exert more control than the city in determining uses for the land opened up by the shift of Route 195.

“If the Comprehensive Plan were not enacted, local leaders would lose a great deal of control,” he said.

Cicilline said that the plan addresses issues of job creation and development pressure, and the public vetting process has been unprecedented in this state.

In addition, he said that the old plan is completely obsolete, and updating it as soon as possible will ensure that Providence gets the kind of development it wants in the next few years.

Cicilline also supports the changes planned for the waterfront, and thinks that the businesses may be exaggerating the dangers to their livelihood.

“I don’t think it threatens the jobs there,” Cicilline said, stressing that there may be opportunities to relocate some uses to other parts of the waterfront.

And he sees mixed-use development as the right way to go for a stretch that borders the booming downtown and the jewelry district.

“I think that there is no question in my mind that, over the long term, we have to find the highest and best use for that area,” Cicilline said. “It’s hard to argue that some of these things, like the salt pile, are the highest and best use.”

Owners of some of the Allens Avenue businesses met with Cicilline yesterday to discuss the waterfront issue. They declined to comment on the meeting, but through representatives said it was a brief, cordial, informational meeting.

College Hill and Fox Point residents have also expressed concern about the future of development on the Fox Point waterfront. They fear that high-rise condominiums would someday tower along the waterfront, cutting off views and creating a barrier between residents and the water.

Some language was built into the plan recently to state that any development in that area should be “neighborhood scale,” and Cicilline said he supported that.

“It would be hard to imagine high-rises there,” he said.

Council Majority Leader Terrence M. Hassett said that while the waterfront interests have pushed hard against the plan, their fears of being put out of business by the plan are off-base.

“I think they’re overreacting,” Hassett said.

“Change always disturbs, and this plan is different. But that plan is totally obsolete,” he said, referring to the existing plan, which was conceived 17 years ago.

As for those nervous that the council will allow the neighborhoods to be forgotten, Hassett said that there is nothing to fear.

The same council members who have built in the protections for the neighborhoods will be on the council through 2009 — and they’re not going to be any less concerned at that time, he said.

dbarbari@projo.com