Japanese University Considers Expansion : Calabasas: Soka officials are studying the feasibility of raising enrollment to 5,000 students. But the National Park Service wants to acquire the campus.

Japan-based Soka University is considering an increase from 80 to 5,000 in the number of students at its rural Calabasas campus, which might doom the hopes of the National Park Service to acquire the land, according to federal and county officials.

Since the university bought the 248-acre site at the southeast corner of Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway in 1986, its representatives have talked in vague terms of plans to make the school a four-year liberal arts institution.

Although no formal applications for government approvals have been made, Soka representatives indicated those plans might be closer to generating a concrete proposal when they met with two county officials in February, disclosing plans to expand over a 25-year period.

“The thrust of their idea is they are investigating the feasibility of putting a 5,000-student university on that site,” said John Schwarze, administrator for the county Department of Regional Planning.

Schwarze and Dave Vannatta, an aide to Supervisor Mike Antonovich, met with two Soka representatives Feb. 9, Schwarze said.

The Soka officials said their plans called for the 5,000-student enrollment to be reached about the year 2016, Schwarze said.

By comparison, the current enrollment of Pepperdine University in Malibu is slightly less than 3,000.

A Soka spokesman said university officials would not be available for comment until later in the week. The university is affiliated with a Buddhist sect known as Soka Gakkai, which has a U.S. arm called Nichiren Shoshu of America. The Calabasas campus now houses no more than about 80 students at a time, according to David E. Gackenbach, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

The expansion discussions come at a time when federal parks officials are displaying renewed interest in acquiring the property for inclusion in the national park.

Gackenbach said he also met with Soka officials in February to inform them the National Park Service is still interested in the site.

“They said they’re not interested in selling,” Gackenbach said.

The Park Service tried to buy the land in 1986, but it was sold instead to the Soka group for a reported $15.5 million. The previous owner was a religious group calling itself the Church Universal and Triumphant, which moved its headquarters to Montana.

For Soka to expand, the university would have to obtain a conditional-use permit from Los Angeles County and a permit from the Coastal Commission, officials of both agencies said.

“It’s premature for us to make any call,” said Pam Emerson, enforcement supervisor for the Coastal Commission. “A lot would depend on how their design conformed with all the plan policies.” Those policies call in part for the property to be “characterized by large open space areas,” she said.

Schwarze said he told the Soka representatives the county would require a full environmental impact report if such an expansion were proposed. Under the county’s Malibu-Santa Monica Mountains Area Plan--or “the Malibu,” as county officials call it--most of the land is designated for agricultural use.

“Our experience has been that any large project in the Malibu is controversial,” Schwarze said.

The land’s flat terrain, accessibility and proximity to Malibu Creek State Park make it ideal for the national park, which has been unable to buy other key properties, such as the former Renaissance Pleasure Faire site in Agoura, said David Brown, a Calabasas conservationist and vice president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation.

“Everybody has always looked on that property as being absolutely essential,” Brown said of the Soka parcel. “I have no reason not to wish Soka well in their general plans, but not in that location.”