Jordan Developer, Park Service Held Private Meetings : Environment: Documents indicate that the sessions were intended to settle land-swap issues. The federal agency denies that any negotiating occurred.

National Park Service officials and proponents of the controversial Jordan Ranch land exchange met privately earlier this year to conduct what the developers described as negotiations to finalize the swap--even as the agency was publicly proclaiming its neutrality and assessing the environmental impact of the deal, according to newly disclosed documents.

The documents include correspondence between representatives of Potomac Investment Associates, the development firm, and high-ranking National Park Service officials. The letters refer to at least three meetings between them from February through May.

In a Feb. 11 letter to the park service, Potomac general partner Peter N. Kyros Jr. referred to an upcoming Washington session as “the initial negotiating meeting.” And, in a May 2 letter, Peter J. Kirsch, a Washington-based attorney for Potomac, said the purpose of a late May meeting between the developer and park officials in Los Angeles would be “the resolution of open issues.” These sessions have not previously been disclosed to the public.

The exchange would have triggered development of a Professional Golfers Assn. golf course and 750 luxury residences on the Jordan Ranch, a tract owned by entertainer Bob Hope that the park service itself had long sought to acquire for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Under the land-swap proposal, Potomac would have obtained 59 acres of park service land in Cheeseboro Canyon for an access road to the development in exchange for a much larger swath of Hope’s mountain holdings.

Supporters of the exchange called it an inexpensive way to acquire a giant piece of parkland. Opponents dismissed it as a sellout of public lands to private interests.

Opponents of the swap maintain that the newly released correspondence shows that the park service was working with the developer behind closed doors to pull off the exchange. The letters make it “very clear” that Potomac “was running the show,” said Mary Wiesbrock of Save Open Space, a conservation group. Wiesbrock, who obtained the park service documents under the Freedom of Information Act, said they illustrate the power of special interests over the park service.

Potomac and park service officials responded in interviews last week that there was nothing improper or unusual about the meetings. Park service officials, disputing Potomac’s characterization of the meetings as negotiating sessions, said the real purpose was to give the developer a chance to update park service representatives on the changing nature of the proposal.

“These meetings were not negotiations,” said George Berklacy, chief park service spokesman. He said they were intended to answer questions raised in public comments on the draft environmental study of the exchange, which was then nearing publication in final form.

“Some of those questions could only be answered with information from the project proponent,” Berklacy said.

Authorities on the National Environmental Policy Act--the law requiring environmental review of major federal actions--agree that the law allows federal officials and project proponents to exchange views or information. They said the law bars officials from reaching a decision before an environmental review is completed.

“I think they could have gotten together at any stage . . . to talk about what the arrangement should be,” said Christopher D. Stone, a professor and environmental law expert at USC’s law school.

A legal problem would arise if, as a result of the discussions, a proposal was altered from that presented to the public in the draft environmental study, he said.

In any case, it’s not clear that Potomac gained anything from the private meetings. No land swap agreement was finalized, and Potomac--facing the likely rejection of its project by Ventura County supervisors, who had the power to turn down a vital zoning change--recently proposed an alternative to the swap that appears to have the support of most of the major parties.

Under the new proposal, announced in October, Potomac and a second big developer, Ahmanson Land Co., would cluster their projects on Ahmanson’s land--eliminating the need for the land swap and allowing the park service to purchase Jordan Ranch as it had originally intended.

Nevertheless, the correspondence provides a glimpse of behind-the-scenes maneuvers involving Hope, well-connected developers, public relations consultants and attorneys who were pushing a high-stakes deal that had provoked emotional public debate and deep schisms among environmentalists.

At the time of the meetings, the park service was still months away from publishing a final environmental impact statement on the proposed exchange. Although some park service officials had spoken favorably of the exchange, the agency repeatedly stated that it would not take a position before completion of the environmental study and a decision by Ventura County on Potomac’s development plan.

At the same time, Potomac’s Kyros asked park service Director James M. Ridenour in a Feb. 11 letter for a meeting to “begin negotiations aimed at preparing a final land exchange agreement between the Service and Potomac.” Kyros, a onetime aide to former Vice President Walter Mondale and the son of an ex-congressman, noted that the proposal had been pending for nearly three years and that the public comment period on the draft environmental study had just closed.

James H. Lake, a former official in the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George Bush whose Washington public relations firm was retained by Potomac, arranged the first meeting between the developer and senior National Park Service and Interior Department officials. Lake said he contacted John Schrote, assistant Interior secretary for policy, budget and administration, to set up the Feb. 25 session in Schrote’s office. Lake said he knew Schrote and “had had previous conversations with him about this project.”

Potomac lawyer Eliot R. Cutler, who was a top official in the Carter Administration, said Potomac was chafing at “the glacially slow pace of the process.” Even if all went as hoped--with Ventura County approving the Jordan Ranch project and the park service approving the land swap--Potomac feared that negotiating the actual land exchange agreement would consume additional months.

“In this business, time is money,” Cutler said in an interview. “There was a whole lot of work that we could do internally” while waiting for reviews to be completed. “It made sense . . . to get as many things resolved and in process as soon as we could.”

At least two more meetings were held in May--one in Washington and the other in Agoura Hills.

A park service official involved in the talks said that, while it would have been improper to reach a final decision while a proposal was under environmental review, “there’s nothing improper about meeting with a project proponent . . .

“In our interactions with them, we always made clear that we could not do anything until” the environmental review process was complete, the official said. “We made it clear to them that we weren’t negotiating, and indeed it would have been improper for us to negotiate.”

Cutler attributed the park service’s insistence that the meetings were not negotiating sessions to “bureaucratic squeamishness”--adding that federal law would not bar discussing how a potential agreement might look.

That explanation doesn’t satisfy opponents of the deal. “All along, the park service had made up their mind that they were going to go ahead with this exchange,” said Donald J. Hellmann, an attorney with the Wilderness Society in Washington. “Their official claim of neutrality was . . . not an honest assessment of the real situation.”

Shortly after the May meetings, Potomac began discussions with Ahmanson that led to abandonment of the proposed land exchange.