Hope Signs Deal to Turn His Acreage Into Parkland : Open spaces: The entertainer will sell the land for a below-market price of $29.5 million to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Gov. Wilson calls action ‘a special gift.’

Entertainer Bob Hope agreed Thursday to a deal that will turn more than 10,000 acres of mountain property ringing the San Fernando Valley into public parkland--the largest park dedication of its kind in decades.

The complex deal will cluster two giant housing projects at a single Ventura County location and increase by 16% state and federal park holdings in the Santa Monica Mountains and Simi Hills.

“The additional land includes some of the most beautiful--and most accessible--areas in the Santa Monica Mountains,” said Gov. Pete Wilson, who announced the deal.

“In preserving these open spaces, Bob Hope is making a special gift to all Californians,” the governor said in a statement. Wilson’s intervention in March helped revive discussions between developers and Ventura County officials.

The signature of Hope, who agreed to sell 7,363 acres for a below-market price of $29.5 million, seals an agreement tentatively reached three weeks ago by a developer working with Hope and the Ahmanson Land Co. The Ahmanson company will donate another 3,025 acres to park agencies.

The deal will fall through if not approved by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. But most supervisors have expressed support for the development projects if they are consolidated on the Ahmanson Ranch in the Simi Hills as proposed.

“I feel nothing but positive vibes about this from the rest of the board,” said Supervisor Maria VanderKolk, who suggested a consolidated project to the developers in August, touching off secret negotiations.

Neither Hope nor his attorney, Payson Wolff, could be reached for comment.

Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said Hope is being enormously generous--selling his land for less than one-third of the $12,000 to $15,000 per acre that park agencies are paying for parcels nearby. In all, park agencies will get parklands worth between $120 million and $150 million, officials have said.

The $29.5 million to be paid to Hope will come from state bonds and federal appropriations, park officials said.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus, whose San Fernando Valley district is across the county line from the consolidated Ahmanson Ranch project, has said she will try to block it because of traffic concerns.

And Agoura Hills-based Save Open Space also opposes the joint development project. It would violate county policies that prohibit new developments unless they are adjacent to existing cities, the group says.

But the project has received widespread support from public officials and environmentalists because it will preserve all of Hope’s 2,300-acre Jordan Ranch near Agoura Hills as part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It also will fill in critical gaps in the area’s regional wildlife corridor.

The deal will put into public ownership 10,388 acres on five separate parcels in the Santa Monica Mountains, Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains.

Under the consolidated plan, Hope will sell to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency, 347 acres in Liberty Canyon in Calabasas, 339 acres in Corral Canyon in Malibu, the 2,308-acre Jordan Ranch, and the 4,369-acre Runkle Ranch just north of the Simi Valley Freeway at the Los Angeles County line.

The key change in the new plan is that 750 houses and a professional-level golf course planned for Hope’s Jordan Ranch will be incorporated instead into a development on the Ahmanson Ranch property.

The Ahmanson Ranch development also will include another 1,850 houses and a town center with 400,000 square feet of offices and stores, as previously planned.

Under the previous proposal, Jordan Ranch would have been an enclave for the rich--luxury homes surrounding one of only 15 golf courses in the nation owned by the Professional Golf Assn. Tour. It would have been a tournament site on the senior tour, and a Bob Hope golf museum would have been there.

The new plan also calls for a PGA course named after Hope, though negotiations with the PGA are not complete, said Fred Maas, spokesman for Hope’s developer.