ebuilding officials said yesterday that they hoped to complete a review of the environmental impact of the proposed construction at the World Trade Center site by next April. This would allow them to lay the cornerstone of a 1,776-foot tower in August 2004, during the Republican National Convention.

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The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is expected to be the lead agency on the environmental review, according to a letter, released yesterday, from the agency to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is overseeing the federally financed rebuilding project.

In giving the corporation less than a year to complete an environmental impact statement and review, officials said they realized that they were setting an aggressive timetable.

John C. Whitehead, the corporation chairman, said the schedule "is a very ambitious one," particularly given the large number of city, state and federal agencies that will have a voice in the project.

But, he said, "we should be able to present a pretty clean case to the environmental people." Mr. Whitehead added: "Environmental issues often hold up projects for years and years, as we all know. We simply must not allow that to happen."

Some environmental advocacy organizations said they believed that the schedule set by the corporation, a city-state agency, was feasible, if optimistic.

"These things are rarely done in that kind of time period," Ronald Shiffman, director of the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development, said in an interview. "The good news is that they want to move it quickly and efficiently, as long as they don't bypass the public review process."

The schedule calls for a draft statement laying out the scope of the projects at the trade center site to be released next week, after final adoption by the development corporation's board. A public hearing on the projects will be conducted on July 23. A draft environmental impact statement will be released in October, with further hearings in November. The final environmental impact statement and general project plan is scheduled to be completed in April.

Kevin Rampe, the interim president of the development corporation, said the agency could begin construction even earlier in the summer of 2004 if the environmental review process is completed. Officials also pointed out that the agency began a search for consultants to work on the environmental review as early as April 2002, so the timeline was not as short as it might appear.

The development corporation also agreed to schedule a series of community forums throughout Lower Manhattan this year to hear from residents and business owners about community priorities for the $1.3 billion in remaining federal funds being held by the agency.

Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have disagreed about some of the potential uses for the money, with the governor generally favoring transportation and other structural projects and the mayor seeking funds for housing and improvements to the East River waterfront.

Advocates for low-income housing packed the development corporation's board meeting yesterday and silently held up signs asking the agency to turn over some of the money for housing projects. Last year, the Bloomberg administration requested that the agency set aside some of the money to help create new housing downtown.

Bettina Damiani, a project director for Good Jobs New York and an organizer of the housing protest yesterday, said the current plans for new housing in Lower Manhattan created "economic segregation" because it would be affordable only for those with high incomes.

Mr. Whitehead said, however, that the agency's remaining money "needs to be spent for a great number of different purposes, and this is not the only one."

Daniel Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, told reporters yesterday that the mayor and the governor were having "early but productive discussions" about how the $1.3 billion would be spent.

Mr. Whitehead created a brief tempest yesterday when, in response to a reporter's question, he said that "the door is slightly ajar" to raising the trade center's memorial to ground level from 30 feet below ground, where Daniel Libeskind, the architect, had placed it. Some downtown residents have sought the change, saying it would make it easier to cross the site.

Later, however, the corporation released a statement reversing Mr. Whitehead's remarks. The statement quoted him as saying: "We are committed to preserving Libeskind's vision, a hallmark of which is the recessed memorial setting, and the winning memorial design must be consistent with that vision."