Park Official Vows to Halt Expansion of Campus : Santa Monica Mountains: Conservancy director says agency will go as far as to condemn Soka University’s Calabasas site to thwart the school’s plan.

If Soka University succeeds in winning approval to expand its Calabasas campus, parks officials will do all they can, including possibly condemning the land, to preserve it for inclusion in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said Friday.

The expansion, from a school for 80 students to a campus for 5,000, would make the university so incompatible with the recreation area that “condemnation is inevitable,” Edmiston said. But moments later he qualified that statement, saying condemnation would not be a foregone conclusion and parks agencies could also try to negotiate some sort of land swap.

Either way, he said, Soka’s expansion plans have “really gone and galvanized people into realizing we are going to have to do something.”

George Odano, vice executive director of the Tokyo-based university’s Calabasas campus, said Friday that the university is intent on converting the site into a four-year liberal arts institution. The land is simply not for sale, he said, and the expansion “is a basic desire, like Pepperdine University,” which is about five miles to the south in Malibu. He promised the expansion would be environmentally sensitive.

The National Park Service tried unsuccessfully to buy the 248-acre Soka site in 1986 and has recently displayed renewed interest in obtaining it, possibly by pooling funds with the state Parks and Recreation Department and the conservancy, which is appraising the property. The parcel, which is mostly flatland, is at the southeast corner of Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway, in the heart of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Odano pointed out that last year Pepperdine obtained California Coastal Commission approval for an expansion plan that would allow it to roughly double its enrollment to about 7,000 students in the next 10 years. The Soka property is also within the jurisdiction of the commission, which has been sued by two Malibu homeowners groups trying to block Pepperdine’s expansion.

Pepperdine has done a wonderful job of preserving the physical beauty of its Malibu campus, Odano said, adding, “We have the same kind of idea, to preserve this campus as natural as possible.”

Edmiston, however, said: “Look at the impact that Pepperdine has had on Malibu with 2,500 or 3,000 students. I just don’t see it is compatible to have Soka in the middle of the mountains and have the great national park that we need.

“Their ideal campus and the ideal park headquarters and center for the entire park fit exactly on the same piece of property, and you can’t have both,” he said.

“There are ways of making sure that individual private will does not thwart the public good,” Edmiston said.

In condemnation actions, government agencies take private property for public purposes and pay the owner fair market value, which can be determined by a judge if the owner files a court challenge. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy has powers of condemnation, subject to state approval.

Odano would not say when formal proposals for permits would be made to Los Angeles County and the Coastal Commission. But Soka has already begun work on an environmental impact report that county officials told them in February would be required, he said.

Traffic at a 5,000-student institution will be among the paramount issues to be addressed by that report, Odano said.

Students at the expanded university would live on campus, and the school will definitely consider measures such as allowing only one-fifth or one-third of the student body to have cars there, Odano said.

“We are very aware of the importance of the natural setting of this area,” Odano said. “This is beautiful nature and beautiful air, and we don’t want to pollute it.”

Dormitories would have to be built to house the students, but no firm building plans have been made, Odano said. He said any buildings would conform with the county height limit, which county officials said is 35 feet in that area.

The campus now holds four three-week sessions and one two-week session per year, with about 80 to 100 students per session coming from Japan to study conversational English, Odano said. Soka University is affiliated with the Soka Gakkai Buddhist sect but is run independently, he said.

Soka bought the land in 1986 for a reported $15.5 million. David E. Gackenbach, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, estimated that the land might be worth $20 million to $25 million today.