Obstacles Threaten Bids for Parkland in Santa Monicas : Soka University: News that the Calabasas campus has more than doubled its acreage shocks state and federal officials, who had once hoped to base a park headquarters there.

Japan-based Soka University announced Thursday that it has purchased 332 acres of land in Calabasas, more than doubling the size of its campus in the Santa Monica Mountains, despite state and federal plans to acquire the land for park use.

News of the acquisition shocked state and federal parks officials who said they were assured by Soka officials earlier this summer that no more land was being sought for the campus.

“I am surprised and aghast,” said David Gackenbach, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Golden State Freeway and includes the Soka property.

“We are trying to be straightforward and honest with the officials of Soka University and trying to be good neighbors to them,” he said. “But it doesn’t appear they are being that way with us.”

Campus spokesman Jeff Ourvan said Soka University administrators had hoped that buying the additional acreage would address some of the environmental concerns by allowing the college to spread out and leave large swaths of land undeveloped.

He also said campus officials’ memory of the June 28 meeting differed from that of the parks officials. “They carefully recollected that no such commitment was made,” he said.

The original 248-acre Calabasas campus has been coveted by the national parks system for use as the recreation area’s headquarters for 12 years, Gackenbach said.

The new land--272 acres straddling Mulholland Highway northeast of the campus and 60 acres to the south--also is desirable parkland, he said.

In April, the university announced a plan to increase its student body from 80 to 5,000 and expand from a short-term English language training institute to a four-year liberal arts college.

That announcement also prompted angry reactions from state and federal parks officials.

From the park perspective, adding more land is no improvement, said Joseph T. Edmiston, director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

“That would just mean more land in between the buildings for lawns or Japanese gardens or something. . . . We’re talking about a park to be open to the public,” he said. “And the impact of 5,000 students on Mulholland Highway and Las Virgenes Road is still going to be there.”

Within days of the April expansion announcement, parks officials said they would do everything they could to preserve the land, including condemning it if necessary.

Condemnation is a court procedure used by public agencies when sellers are unwilling to give up their land, under which a judge mandates a purchase price.

Both Edmiston and Gackenbach said Thursday that they hope other avenues will prove successful, but neither would rule out condemnation as an option.

Other options under consideration, they said, are convincing Soka officials to sell voluntarily or offering to trade them a parcel elsewhere for the Calabasas land.

Those discussions are to continue Sunday at the campus, when parks officials are scheduled to meet with the university’s Japan-based directors, who are in town for the college’s annual Pacific Basin Symposium on peace, economics and the environment.

Even if the parks officials are able to persuade reluctant Soka administrators to sell or exchange part or all of the land, federal and state money would still have to be scraped together, Edmiston said.

An appraisal of the original 248 acres is under way.

Gackenbach said in the spring that the campus land could be worth $20 million or more.

Soka bought it for $15.5 million in 1986.

The value of the new properties is an even greater unknown because Ourvan said Soka had promised the sellers not to divulge the purchase price.

The bulk of the new land was purchased from Rossco Holdings, owned by Beverly Hills attorney Leonard Ross.

Since 1985, Ross had sought approval to build 47 houses on the land, but the California Coastal Commission last year shaved that proposal back to 26 houses.