Park Service Not Giving Up Plans to Buy ‘Camelot’

Stunned by the sale of a religious sect’s Calabasas headquarters to a Tokyo university, federal park planners said Monday that they will attempt to buy the site from the Japanese school and turn it into a regional park headquarters.

The 218-acre Church Universal and Triumphant’s “Camelot” compound at Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway was purchased Thursday by Soka University for $15.5 million. University officials said they intend to establish an American campus at the site.

But the university may end up arm-wrestling with the National Park Service over the scenic parcel because parks officials view it as the “keystone” to public recreation land in the Santa Monica Mountains, a park service administrator said.

Long Earmarked for Park Service

The compound had long been earmarked for federal acquisition--and was appraised for the Park Service last month--said Daniel R. Kuehn, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

“I was surprised. I had not heard any negotiations were going on with the church. But, if I thought the property was lost forever, I’d be shocked,” Kuehn said.

“We view that piece of property as very important for public use. It remains a high priority . . . we hope to make an offer to the new owner.”

University officials were reportedly en route to Los Angeles on Monday and could not be reached for comment. But one of Soka’s American representatives said he doubts that the school is interested in selling.

‘We Just Bought It’

“We just bought it,” said Eric Kimura, an administrator with Nichiren Shoshu Sokagakkai of America, a Buddhist group that assisted the university in the acquisition. “We bought it because we’re planning to establish a college and language center.”

Kuehn said parks planners had hoped to use the site as a combination headquarters-visitor center for all parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains.

He said limited school use is not a “significant threat” to the site.

“I would have been scared had they sold to a big development company,” Kuehn said. “From a standpoint of preserving the property intact, having a college or university buy it with an eye to using existing facilities is less of a threat.”

Environmentalists who have lobbied vigorously to win funds from Congress to purchase the site have a similar view of the matter, Sierra Club leader David Brown of Calabasas said.

“I’m not willing to write off that property yet,” Brown said Monday. “We’re going to continue fighting for it, and I hope the Park Service does, too. We can’t do without it. I’m not going to accept this as the last word.”

Brown said the site is flat and “accessible to everyone,” even though it is surrounded by rugged mountains at the northern end of Malibu Canyon. Other federal and state parkland is next to the tract.

Dormitory space developed on the land 30 years ago by the Claretian Fathers as a Catholic monastery called “Claretville” would be ideal as a youth hostel, Brown said.

Federal officials refused to reveal the findings of the independent appraisal of the property they recently authorized, although several sources said the land was valued at about $11 million.

Congressional appropriations for all Santa Monica Mountain acquisitions this year totaled only $8 million.

Parks officials said they have spent an average of $6,000 an acre for the 12,000 acres they have bought in the Santa Monica Mountains. In contrast, Soka University paid Church Universal $71,000 an acre.

Church Universal’s members said the cash payment will be used for the development of 33,000 acres of isolated ranch land near Livingston, Mont., that will become the sect’s new headquarters.

They said most local followers of the sect’s “ascended master” blend of Eastern and Western religions taught by Elizabeth Clare Prophet will probably remain if they have Los Angeles-area jobs or businesses.

But about 250 people who live at the Calabasas compound will relocate before Church Universal vacates the site Dec. 15. So will others who stay in 30 rooms at a Canoga Park motel reserved for the sect and in a 26-unit, sect-owned apartment complex, also in Canoga Park.

The church, which purchased the Calabasas property for $5.6 million in 1978, has come under fire from neighbors and ex-devotees, who labeled it a dangerous cult. A Westlake Village man who claimed in a lawsuit that he was subjected to thought control while a member won a $1.5-million verdict against the church three months ago.