HARTWICK - The past is standing in the way of Lou Presutti's future.

The Cooperstown Dreams Park CEO wants to begin work on the first phase of three-year multi-million dollar expansion project as soon as the spring construction season begins, but it now looks as though his plan to finish the job before visitors arrive may be in jeopardy.

When the project is completed, the park will be able to host a 20 percent increase in the number of participants who travel each week from across the country to play tournament style baseball.

Presutti's site plan review application is currently being reviewed by the Hartwick town planning board and during its meeting last Tuesday, he was told that because of concerns about sites which may be located in the project area, he would have to complete a Phase I archeological study. A phase I study is designed to determine the presence or absence of archeological sites or other cultural resources in the project's area.

During the meeting, planning board co-chairman Dick Kelly told Presutti that the board needed to request he complete the study recommended by the state. "They're admant about the fact that you need to do the archeological study," he said.

Presutti was clearly unhappy about the study because of the threat it posed to getting work underway at the park. The study, he told the planners, could "push us past our open date."

He argued that all of the work scheduled for the first year of the expansion was to be done on the Route 28, or west side, of the railroad tracks where there has already been substantial ground disturbance, negating the need for the study. "The only undisturbed area is to the east of the railroad tracks," he told the board.

Presutti tried to hold the board responsible for his woes because they made him submit an application which covered all his future plans rather than continue his piecemeal approach. The work across the tracks comes in year two and, he said, he could have come to the board with an application for only the work in the first year. He asked the board for a conditional approval contingent on the complettion of the archeological study so the application could continue to move fordward, but the board wanted no part of it.

"This will be your responsibility to please the state so good luck," said planning board member Orrin Higgins. "The state will have the final word."

"We cannot, as a board, make a decision until we have complete information," Kelly said. "We can't turn anyone loose without complete information."

One of the problems, Kelly said, is that the board must look at the entire application and cannot start cutting out things to give a developer the go ahead. "This is just part of the process," he said.

"My request is not too far out of line," Lou said.

But board member Ken Hotaling reminded the rest of the planners that their envirnomental attorney Tom Fucillo had said earlier that an application's environmental assessment form must be completed before going further.

When he submitted his most recent application, Presutti had included a copy of a November 1995 letter from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation connected to his original application for the park which stated the agency had no "archeological concerns at this time."

But in the six years that have passed, that has changed and the State Historic Preservation Office now recommends that a Phase I archeological study is warranted for any ground distrubing activities unless substantial prior ground disturbance can be documented."

Historic Sites Restoration Coordinator Kenneth Markunas wrote in his letter that he was aware of the earlier determination, but "in the intervening years significant new data has become available and a number of previously unknown sites have been identified in adjacent parcels."

Right next door, on the land Eddie Einhorn wants to build his Cooperstown Baseball World complex, a number of sites were identified during a Phase I study. Further north on Route 28, at the future location of the new Holiday Inn Express, sites were found.

Artifacts were also discovered when the land for the county's new $21.9-million county nursing home was examined last fall. The Otsego County board of representatives recently approved funding for an advanced archeological study.

Under the state's Environmental Quality Review law, a prposed project area must be examined and its artifacts documented to determine its eligibility for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, or the project must be modified so that it doesn't affect an historically sensitive area, according to Diane Carlton, Otsego County's planning director.