Soka Plans to Raze 45 Buildings on Site : Calabasas: The Japanese university’s demolition proposal has taken parks officials, who want the land for their headquarters, by surprise.

A Japanese university that wants to build a 5,000-student campus in a Calabasas meadow plans to tear down all but one of the existing buildings there, disturbing state and federal park officials who want the site themselves.

There are 46 structures on the site, according to consultants hired by Tokyo-based Soka University, ranging from houses and barns to dormitories built in the 1950s as part of a monastery.

The disclosure that the buildings would be demolished--except for the historic Gillette mansion--was made in a preliminary planning document by Soka architects obtained Monday by The Times. It surprised parks officials, who still hope to acquire the land and buildings on Mulholland Highway at Las Virgenes Road for use as a headquarters for the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area.

“This just proves our point . . . that the park is a superior use for the site,” said Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, one of three agencies involved in efforts to acquire the land. “The parks could use that property on a turnkey basis--no tearing buildings down, no building new things.”

Edmiston also said the demolition plan contradicts past statements by university representatives, who had told the parks officials that they would only consider trading their 600-acre holdings for a site with similar amenities, including buildings.

However, Steve Davis, the architect designing the school site, said the university needs the buildings--but only temporarily. The school plans to use them to house students during the 10 years it will take to begin building replacements. He said the existing structures would be taken down gradually as the university grows from the 80 or so Japanese students who now visit for short seminars to 5,000 students enrolled full time in a four-year liberal arts program by the year 2015.

Soka University’s home campus in Tokyo houses 6,000 students.

The Spanish-colonial-style Gillette mansion, which would be preserved as a reception center, was built in the 1920s by King Gillette, the razor-blade magnate, and includes a blade-shaped swimming pool and tiled courtyard.

Davis said the university decided to tear down existing structures because some are not seismically sound, most do not fit in architecturally with the Gillette mansion and many are not ideally located. He said the university wants to preserve as much open space as possible by clustering buildings more closely.

“We want to create a campus that focuses on the central area,” Davis said. “We feel we can condense things.”

Neighbors of the property, many of whom oppose the university’s expansion plans, were also surprised to learn of the demolition plans, which they said were not mentioned during meetings with community groups held on and off campus late last year.

“The question is, what do they intend to put in their place?” said Les Hardie, president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, a coalition of 16 homeowner groups in the area.

Hardie said the most recent disclosure confirmed his suspicions that the university has already developed more detailed plans than those it released in public meetings.

“It seems to us that information is being parceled out in a very, very controlled fashion,” he said. “We would like to see it all laid out.”

The university’s latest plan, which university spokesman Jeff Ourvan said was printed for distribution to neighbors and elected officials, also calls for developing commercial recreation facilities on the nine acres of property that are zoned for that use.

Ourvan and Davis said they did not yet know what form of recreation that would be, although both mentioned that the existing zoning would allow such facilities as a miniature golf course or a recreational vehicle park.

Edmiston said state and federal parks agencies are continuing to look for a parcel of land that could be traded for the Calabasas property. The university agreed to delay until April 15 its application to the county for construction permission to give the parks officials time to propose other options.

Parks officials have said in the past that if the trade effort fails, they may try to seize the land through condemnation.

The university purchased 248 acres in 1986 and announced in August that it had more than doubled its holdings through two more land purchases. It has close financial and philosophical ties to Nichiren Shoshu of America, a Japanese lay organization--critics call it a cult--that emphasizes chanting for personal and material gain.