Hope Land Impact Studies Use Old Data : Jordan Ranch: Both draft studies will assess the project as outlined before the entertainer made concessions in an effort to mollify opponents, officials said.

Two long-awaited studies on the environmental effects of the proposed Jordan Ranch development will be based on an outdated design of the controversial project, and officials acknowledge that this could eventually require time-consuming revisions to the reports.

A draft environmental impact report on the project could be issued within two weeks by Ventura County planning officials, while a related federal study for the National Park Service could go out for public comment in four to six weeks, officials with the agencies said.

But the officials said both draft studies will assess the project as outlined before April, when entertainer Bob Hope, owner of the 2,308-acre property in eastern Ventura County, made concessions in an effort to mollify opponents.

Hope agreed to subtract 400 dwellings from the proposed residential and golf course development. He also agreed that an access road that would traverse National Park Service land would be scaled back from four lanes to two and would be tunneled underground.

However, consultants working for Ventura County and the park service have continued to analyze the original proposal for 1,152 residences and a four-lane road. That plan, officials maintained, is the only one that has been submitted to them.

Potomac Investment Associates, the development firm that has optioned Hope’s land, took the calculated risk of leaving the original plan before the agencies. Company officials said they worried that if the proposal were amended, Ventura County and the park service might decide to start their reviews of it from scratch--perhaps even renegotiating contracts with environmental consultants.

Instead, Potomac plans to offer the scaled-down plan in response to complaints that may surface in the draft reports--and have long been voiced by area residents--that the project is too large and environmentally harmful. The revised plan could serve in the final versions of the environmental studies as Potomac’s response to the complaints.

“It was our position that once the documents were made public, we would be proposing to both organizations . . . a reduction in density to 750 units and a two-lane road,” said Fred Maas, a Potomac vice president.

But the strategy has come under attack from project opponents. The agencies “should have made the developer’s application reflect the true project that’s been hyped in the press,” said Mary Wiesbrock of Agoura, a leading Jordan Ranch critic who has urged that the scenic, oak-dotted tract be acquired for parkland.

“It seems like the developers are controlling the process,” she said.

Potomac’s strategy could backfire, however. If the new design raises issues not covered by the draft EIR, officials might decide to issue a new draft EIR and require another lengthy public comment period, said Dennis Hawkins, a senior planner with the Ventura County Resources Agency.

Meanwhile, David Gackenbach, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, run by the National Park Service, said his agency may issue its draft study soon or, to avoid duplicating effort, wait until Potomac formally revises the plan.

“We’re not interested in . . . having to spend the time to respond to all those comments in writing twice,” he said. “It’s just extra time we don’t have available.”

In an interview, Gackenbach also disclosed a possible change in the terms of the proposed land exchange that is the linchpin of the project.

Road access to Jordan Ranch is poor, and Potomac needs park service land to build a road to link the property with Ventura Freeway. Potomac has offered the park service and Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency, about 1,100 acres of Jordan Ranch in return for 59 acres in neighboring Cheeseboro Canyon that are part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The access road would cross the 59 acres.

But Gackenbach said last week that if the park service goes along with the exchange, it may agree to deed Potomac only about five acres, which he said is all that is needed for the actual roadbed.

Gackenbach said that the park service could prevent Potomac from doing “anything else with the rest” of the 59 acres.

Maas, the Potomac vice president, said the idea of an exchange for five acres had “never been posed to me directly.” But he called it an intriguing proposal and said that “anything the park service wants to propose, we’re happy to consider.”

The park service study will consider the environmental consequences of the land exchange alone, and the Ventura County report is to focus more broadly on the impacts of the Jordan Ranch development.

Public interest in the studies has drooped somewhat in the two weeks since Hope asked the city of Simi Valley to annex Jordan Ranch to take the fate of the project out of Ventura County’s hands. The June election of slow-growth advocate Maria K. VanderKolk to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors has dimmed chances the county will approve the massive project. In making the pitch to Simi Valley, which is north of the property, Hope’s representatives acknowledged that they were seeking a more favorable venue for the project.

However, they said they would keep their application before the county and take their chances with the supervisors if the annexation proposal fails.