New Jersey and Camden officials plan this week to announce a development proposal that would bring $1.2 billion - most of it private money - into the city's Cramer Hill neighborhood in what is believed to be the largest single investment in Camden's history.

The decade-long project would also bring 4,000 to 5,000 units of housing, retail, open space and a new bridge from Admiral Wilson Boulevard into the neighborhood, which borders Pennsauken on the Delaware River.

In addition, the abandoned 90-acre Harrison municipal landfill would be converted into an 18-hole golf course, alongside homes selling for up to $200,000 built along the waterfront.

The plan - including brownfields cleanup, demolition and development - would be headed by Cherokee Investment Partners, a Raleigh, N.C.-based brownfields development firm that has reclaimed hundreds of acres of contaminated industrial land nationwide since it was founded in 1990, officials said.

"It's the biggest project in the history of this city or any other city as far as I'm concerned," Mayor Gwendolyn Faison said.

She said the project had been approved by the city redevelopment agency. Of Cherokee, she said, "They're serious. They're ready to spend money."

"This is the single most significant investment the city has ever had in all of its 175 years," said a senior Camden City official, who did not want to be identified. "Essentially, the plan creates an entirely new community out of Cramer Hill."

Bret Batchelder, a Cherokee managing director, said late Friday night that he did not know whether the company had been officially selected but called the proposal "a significant real-estate project that would have a transforming effect on Camden."

Camden's chief operating officer, Melvin R. "Randy" Primas, confirmed that a major announcement was imminent but declined to provide details.

Gov. McGreevey is expected at the news conference this week, officials said.

Hundreds of people would be displaced in the plan, said City Council President Angel Fuentes, who vowed to closely supervise any relocation. He said officials would seek public input before anything is built.

"The fear is gentrification like the Camden waterfront," he said.

Also unclear is the fate of the state-funded $30 million renovation plan for the Washington School, which is in the path of the project.

The project comes on the heels of a flood of public investment into Camden, a former industrial powerhouse that has become one of the nation's poorest cities.

McGreevey last year signed a $175 million recovery plan for the city that includes money to expand colleges and hospitals, demolish abandoned buildings, rehabilitate housing, and improve roads and other infrastructure.

The state has also awarded the Camden school system $437 million in school construction funds to build 15 schools and renovate nearly two dozen others over the next decade.

Over the last decade, projects such as the New Jersey State Aquarium, the Tweeter Center, a minor-league baseball stadium and, most recently, the renovation of the old RCA Nipper Building into luxury apartments, have transformed the city's waterfront.

Cherokee has acquired more than 300 sites across North America and Western Europe. The company's Elizabeth, N.J., affiliate, OENJ Cherokee, capped and developed the 166-acre city dump there. It is now the site of the $360 million Jersey Gardens outlet shopping mall, which opened in 1999.

The company is also working to restore a former dump in Bayonne into a golf course.

Batchelder said Cherokee submitted the Camden proposal to Primas about three or four months ago. The company had looked at other sites in the region but was attracted to Cramer Hill because of its undeveloped waterfront, officials said.

The one-square-mile, 2,500-home area is one of Camden's most stable neighborhoods. The Harrison landfill is only a section of the neighborhood, which consists overall of row and semidetached houses in Camden's eastern section near the Pennsauken border.

"It's a good shot in the arm," said City Councilman Ali Sloan El. "It's a great thing as long as the people benefit instead of the outside contractors and union workers."

The senior Camden City official was cautiously optimistic.

"Governors have announced projects before that have never gotten off the ground," the official said, pointing to former Gov. James Florio's multimillion dollar Camden initiative in 1993. "They all seemed like they could be good ideas, but the funding just collapsed."