A Manhattan company made a surprise bid Wednesday for the Brooklyn railyards where a developer wants to put a Nets basketball arena amid a cluster of towering apartment buildings.

Extell Development Co. executives said they want to build a lower, less populous residential project without an arena above the yards.

Developer Bruce Ratner has spent years planning and promoting his $3.5 billion proposal to build a Frank Gehry-designed arena for the team, which he purchased last year, alongside thousands of apartment towers reaching as high as 60 stories.

A spokesman for Ratner declined to comment on the competing bid.

Neither Extell nor Ratner's spokesman said how much they were bidding for the property, which is owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA's deadline for bids ended Wednesday. The MTA declined comment.

Ratner has proposed 17 Gehry-designed buildings with 6,000 residential units housing roughly 15,000 people and 1.9 million square feet of office space.

The Extell plan proposes 1,940 residential units and 116,000 square feet of retail space in 11 buildings that would not be higher than 28 stories.

Extell's plan was developed in response to a call for competing bids by neighborhood residents who object to the Ratner project, particularly plans to use the state's power to condemn surrounding homes and businesses whose owners don't want to sell.

The smaller Extell plan would not require the use of eminent domain.