After nearly three years of heavy lifting, leaders of a land-use coalition are ready to hand off their consensus-building efforts to a new eight-member committee.

First, they have to convince Douglas County commissioners to pick up what ECO2 is dropping off.

“We’re looking to develop a plan for open space and to develop a plan for business parks,” said Kelvin Heck, co-chair of the ECO2 committee. “We’re in this together. We have to build our future, and map our future. And this is a good way to do it.”

Tonight, commissioners will hear Heck’s pitch for promoting economic development and land preservation through a new form of ECO2. The meeting begins at 6:35 at the county courthouse, 1100 Mass.

The committee wants to inject new life into what began in May 2000 as an ambitious coalition-building effort. At the table were subscribers to two schools of thought. One was developers anxious to pump new jobs, dollars and development into a community increasingly populated by commuters; the other group was preservationists and others concerned that the community could lose the natural resources that made the area attractive to developers and businesses in the first place.

Through dozens of committee meetings, a handful of public hearings and countless position-paper revisions, ECO2 members at one point pushed for consideration of a 1/4-cent sales tax increase to finance the committee’s goals. The $22 million expected to be generated over 10 years was to be split evenly between efforts to build business parks and preserve open space.

Such efforts, however, ran into obstacles. Among the biggest: an economy spiraling downward and the Lawrence school district’s intention to seek voter approval for a $59 million bond issue this spring.

Tonight, ECO2 members won’t be asking for money. Instead, they’ll ask commissioners to appoint a new eight-member committee to carry on their goals, preparing for a time when businesses are looking to expand and voters are more likely to reach into their wallets for public investments.

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“We’re just asking to give the ECO2 group the credibility to do the planning that needs to take place,” Heck said. “We want to keep this dialogue moving forward, so we’re in a position to take the next step.”

Commissioner Charles Jones, a member of ECO2, remains optimistic that the effort will continue, despite lingering “distrust” among folks at “both ends of the issue” who fail to see the value of cooperation.

“Those ends are there, but there’s also a large middle that says we need to do these things jointly and that there can be trust and effectiveness built,” Jones said. “We just have to build on the trust that we’ve built through the past three years of ECO2.”