IF YOU WANT to see the real legacy of former mayor Willie Brown, writ large in all of its corruption and greed, take a look at the proposed office park, shopping mall, and YMCA project that the Mills Corp., a Virginia-based developer, wants to build on Piers 27-31.

This is exactly the sort of project that happens when you have a mayor who cares only for campaign cash and cronyism – and a group of hand-picked commissioners who go along with his every whim, without even bothering to ask the hard questions.

Mills wants to build 164,700 square feet of office space and an extensive retail complex on Port land that is supposed to be used for maritime and recreational uses. The plan should never have gotten off the ground, but Brown and Mills lobbyists rammed it through the Port Commission in 2001.

Now that the supervisors are taking a hard look at it, the project seems to be sinking fast. The only way Mills could pretend there was anything in this for the public was to promise a nice, new YMCA on the site – but it turns out the developer doesn't even have a written contract with the YMCA, and that the community-based nonprofit has no money and no concrete plans for raising the $30 million the facility would cost.

When Sup. Aaron Peskin forced the company to demonstrate its financial feasibility (in order to qualify for a $2.1 million city subsidy), Mills balked. Instead of proving to the supervisors that the project would actually make economic sense, the developer decided to give back the subsidy and change the nature of the proposal. That was nothing but a bold effort to escape further public scrutiny.

In the meantime, the project (and even Mills itself) seems to be in serious financial trouble – and it's very clear that nothing the company says at this point can be trusted.

The project comes back to the Port Commission in December, and the commissioners should refuse to accept any changes in the original deal. That would effectively kill the project.

Meanwhile, there's a lesson here for Mayor Gavin Newsom and the supervisors: Appointing political hacks to commissions and then ordering them to do what the lobbyists say is a recipe for exactly the sort of disaster San Francisco may narrowly dodge, this time.