Porter Ranch Plan Specifications Will Delay the Bulldozers : Timetables: A number of unresolved issues will probably delay the grading of Chatsworth hillsides for another year.

Although the City Council has approved the massive Porter Ranch development project, it will be another year before the tracks of bulldozers grind up the last footprints of hikers over 1,300 acres of the Chatsworth hills.

The city and the Porter Ranch Development Co. must settle several issues before the foundation for the first house or shopping center can be laid in the area north of the Simi Valley Freeway. The only part of the project on which construction may start sooner is on a fire station and support roads for it at the southern end of the site.

But make no mistake, the scrub-covered hills are about to change forever. And not just the brush will disappear under a bulldozer’s tracks. In some cases, so will the hills.

Although the developer has promised not to alter the area’s hilly topography, the hills that remain after the project is completed in 20 years will not even be the same hills that are there now, according to a city official.

The developer will use a new process known as “land-form grading,” a spokesman said, in which “you just kind of reshape things to make it so a street can fit there.”

Jim Bolger, 62, a hiker from Woodland Hills, treks through the area as many as four times a week. He said he will continue to do so once construction on the project begins, but it won’t be the same.

“It will sort of spoil the area,” he said.

Despite vocal protests by area homeowners during the permit process, the City Council voted 14 to 0 Tuesday to allow development to proceed after the area’s councilman, Hal Bernson, announced his support.

By approving the company’s basic land-use plan, the City Council cleared the way to transform undeveloped hills north of the Simi Valley Freeway in Chatsworth into a vast complex that would provide housing for up to 11,000 people and jobs for up to 21,000.

The land-use plan approved by the council stipulates only the type of development--residential, commercial or recreational--that may occur in various parts of the project area. It does not specify which parts of the project would be developed first or where individual structures would be built.

The developer must receive city approval of more detailed construction maps before construction can begin. City officials said that process is likely to take at least 18 months and could take up to six years.

To build the fire station and supporting roads, a requirement of the Los Angeles City Fire Department, the developer will extend Winnetka Avenue north of the Simi Valley Freeway, Corbin Avenue north across the freeway and west to the new segment of Winnetka Avenue, and Rinaldi Street west to Corbin Avenue, said Porter Ranch Development Co. spokes

man Paul Clarke. The new fire station will be at Winnetka and Corbin avenues, he said.

Building on the commercial and residential portions of Porter Ranch cannot begin until the city approves more detailed plans for the 24 sections, or tracts, into which the developer has divided the 1,300 acres, said Nancy Scrivner, an associate with the city Planning Department.

The developer determines the order in which it presents the tracts, and may submit the tract maps individually or in groups.

Clarke indicated that after the developer builds the fire station and supporting roads, it will extend Mason Avenue north and Rinaldi Street west until the two roads meet. At that intersection, he said, a neighborhood mall will be built containing a grocery store, a pharmacy and a dry-cleaner.

When the developer builds the shopping mall, he said, it will “probably put some houses in as well.” Construction will proceed throughout the entire 20 years of planned development on a tract-by-tract basis, Clarke said.

Although the developer may submit the tract maps in any order, the city must approve each map before construction can begin. The city normally takes between six and eight months to rule on a tract plan, said Ron Maben, a city planner. The city’s response, Maben said, usually is a “yes with conditions”--a tentative approval that requires the developer to take certain additional actions before starting to build.

Typical requirements include larger sewage systems and wider roads, Scrivner said.

After the city approves the tract plan, the developer has six years to meet the conditions required by the city. But most developers fulfill their obligations within months, Maben said. So the average time between submitting a tract map and starting construction ranges from 18 months to two years.

Porter Ranch Development Co. has not decided which tracts it will seek to develop after it finishes the fire station and the area around the residential mall, Clarke said. The company will attempt to sell houses before they are built, he said, so it will consider buyers’ demands in deciding which tracts to submit for city approval first.

Because of the size of the proposed Porter Ranch project, the city and the developer will attempt to negotiate an extra accord, called a development agreement, before the developer submits the first tract map for city approval. Under a typical development agreement, city officials said, the city might allow the developer to build more residential units than normally allowed in exchange for a promise to include other items, such as affordable housing.

Clarke said lawyers from the city and his company will begin to negotiate a development agreement this week. Although he said he hopes an accord will be signed, he said his company could decide to submit a tract map for city approval before a development agreement is reached.

The optional development agreement, Scrivner said, simply “reduces problems down the road.”

Clarke said that even when all the agreements have been signed and all the tracts have been developed, the land on Porter Ranch will resemble its current topographic form. “There’s nothing that in any way, shape or form will be in any way what you refer to as massive,” he said.

Scrivner disagreed. The land in general will remain as hilly as before, she said, but “the topography won’t be the same.” She said Porter Ranch after development will have “a sort of natural-looking landscape, but it won’t look like it is now.”

In addition to the 1,300 acres the City Council approved, the developer has large property holdings next to that parcel. The company already has received conditional city approval for development of two tracts northeast of the 1,300-acre project, city civil engineer Glenn Hirano said.