Hope Halves Parkland Cost to $10 Million : Environment: Rep. Beilenson negotiated the new price. The deal still hinges on a land swap between the U.S. and a developer.

Bob Hope has agreed to cut in half the $20-million price he had negotiated for transferring about 5,700 acres of his mountain property in Los Angeles and Ventura counties for public use if the National Park Service approves a controversial land exchange.

The new agreement was negotiated by Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles), a leading proponent of preserving open space in the Santa Monica Mountains. His support significantly enhances the swap’s prospects, backers and opponents said.

“A good deal for the public has just gotten even better,” Beilenson said Wednesday. “There will probably never again be an opportunity to gain so much valuable open space in Southern California at so little cost to the public.”

The price tag, disclosed in April, was considered below the market value of Hope’s three parcels in the Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountains.

The pact remains contingent on Park Service approval of an exchange of 59 acres of federally owned land in Cheeseboro Canyon for about 1,100 acres that Hope owns on the adjacent Jordan Ranch in eastern Ventura County.

Potomac Investment Associates, which has an option on Jordan Ranch, is seeking the Cheeseboro parcel for an access road to 750 homes and a golf course that it proposes to build on the remainder of Hope’s 2,308-acre ranch.

The $20 million was to be paid with funds approved under a conservation initiative passed by California voters on June 5. Beilenson said the $10-million savings would be used to buy additional properties for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

The park hopes to use the savings to help purchase its top priority, a 248-acre parcel in Calabasas for use as a park headquarters and visitors’ center. The land is owned by Soka University, which is planning a major expansion and has refused to sell the property.

The double-barreled announcement of the new deal and Beilenson’s support for it is a major shot in the arm for proponents of the swap, which has divided environmentalists. A day earlier, Sen. Pete Wilson, the California Republican gubernatorial nominee, and Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) became the first lawmakers to express public support for the exchange.

“This has got to send a real signal to Washington,” said Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the architect of the original land-swap deal. “Tony Beilenson is a guy who’s viewed as the conscience of the mountains.”

Beilenson said he recently contacted both Park Service officials, to encourage them to approve the exchange, and Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.), chairman of a key House subcommittee, to inform him of his support for it.

Yates chairs the interior subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees funding of land acquisition for national parks, including in the Santa Monicas. Opponents of the land swap had asked Yates’ panel to block the exchange. The subcommittee could do so by prohibiting the Park Service from using any of the fiscal 1991 funds for the Santa Monicas to pay for a required environmental review of the exchange.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) on Tuesday made the same request of the interior subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Beilenson said his endorsement of the proposal “makes a great deal of difference to (Yates), and I think that he and his committee will be supportive of the deal.”

Donald J. Hellmann, an attorney for the Wilderness Society and a leading critic of the swap, acknowledged that Beilenson’s action, while not unexpected, was a blow to opponents.

“Congressman Yates certainly listens to Mr. Beilenson,” Hellman said. “We’re disappointed that he doesn’t feel the Jordan Ranch is worth preserving.”

Opponents of the exchange have maintained that the Park Service should pursue its longstanding goal of buying Jordan Ranch. Beilenson and others have said this is not financially feasible.

Beilenson said he negotiated the reduced price with Peter Kyros, general partner of Potomac Investment, during a series of phone calls and meetings in Washington. The lawmaker said he proposed the 50% reduction in the price tag, which Kyros worked out with Hope.

The $10 million is to pay for most of Hope’s 4,369-acre Runkle Ranch in the Santa Susana Mountains. The remaining 700 acres of the property, as well as 177 acres of Corral Canyon in Malibu, would be donated by Hope to the conservancy, with the Corral Canyon property eventually going to the Park Service.

Beilenson said that the entire deal, however, could be jeopardized by slow-growth advocate Maria VanderKolk’s defeat of Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer in Ventura County last week. VanderKolk opposes the Cheeseboro Canyon land-swap and made it a major campaign issue.