Carlsbad

The state Coastal Commission on Thursday approved the second phase of a private graduate university and residential development being built on the northwestern shore of Batiquitos Lagoon.

Meeting in Los Angeles, the commission threw its unanimous support behind additional construction at the 167-acre Batiquitos Lagoon Educational Park, a project of San Diego-based Sammis Properties.

The action paves the way for construction of 476 homes, a 370-suite hotel, a conference center, 120,000 square feet of commercial space and a 465,000-square-foot educational complex on the site, between Interstate 5 and the ocean.

A year ago, the commission endorsed the project in concept but requested that the developer return for subsequent approvals. Several conditions dealing with erosion and runoff control, appropriate bluff setbacks and the provision of public trails near the 560-acre Carlsbad lagoon were attached to Thursday’s approval, according to Tom Crandall, the commission’s regional director in San Diego.

Anchoring the educational park, which is modeled after those surrounding Stanford and Princeton, will be a small, private graduate university with about half a dozen disciplines, among them law, public affairs, communication and information science, and Pacific Rim studies.

The university, to be closely aligned with the conservative political philosophies of developer Don Sammis, is expected to enroll about 1,000 students. Plans for a companion “think tank,” or public policy center, are also in the works.

The mesa-top site, once used by flower growers, also might become the permanent training center for the men’s and women’s U.S. Olympic volleyball teams. Sammis was a financial sponsor of the 1984 Olympic volleyball squad and owned two professional teams in the now-defunct International Volleyball Assn.