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SAN FRANCISCO — Two months after the top official at the Presidio stepped down amid allegations of nepotism and spending abuses, redevelopment plans for the verdant national park are moving forward — slowly. 

The board that controls the Presidio must meet a federal profitability mandate that local citizens fear will sacrifice the park’s environmental and historic sanctity. The Presidio Trust hopes to complete that master plan by June, and local opponents of developing the former Army base want to inject their priorities into that document. 

On Saturday, they gathered to renew the development-versus-preservation tug-of-war that began in 1996, when Congress founded the Presidio Trust — and said it had to be economically self sufficient by 2013. 

While Presidio officials explained the outpost’s 220-year history to hundreds of locals at an open house, Bill Henslin stood with a few dozen protesters to denounce what he described as a corporate takeover of the park. 

“The Presidio is not an enclave to the elite,” said Henslin, co-founder of the Friends of the Presidio National Park. “It should be a place for the public and it should emphasize natural and historic values over corporate values.” 

Protesters said the latter was the priority of James Meadows, the Presidio’s executive director who resigned in December after four years and a history of conflict with citizens groups. Several published reports accused Meadows of misspending on Presidio projects and running a patronage system that gave jobs to relatives and allowed subordinates to pay below-market rents for homes on site. 

Meadows also drew fire from preservationists when the trust inked a deal in August with movie producer George Lucas’ Lucasfilm Ltd. to build a 23-acre office and film production facility. That deal creates a 900,000-square-foot campus for 2,500 workers in place of an old hospital. 

“They had disagreements with his style,” Ron Sonenshine, spokesman for the trust, said Saturday. “He’s not here. What’s past is past.” 

The trust, which oversees 729 buildings and nearly 700 acres of open space, hired an executive consulting firm last week to find a replacement for Meadows. His annual salary was about $200,000, Sonenshine said. 

The citizen groups believe relations could get better with Presidio officials, though they say their vision is opposite the trust’s board of directors that will chose the next executive director. They also are asking for detailed federal audits of the trust’s finances. Sonenshine said the General Accounting Office audited the trust in 2001, part of what he described as “intense scrutiny from Congress and the federal government.”