Soka Plans Jeopardized by Violation : Expansion: The school, which has a permit to operate religious classes, was to apply to the county next month to become a full-fledged college.

Soka University’s plan to expand its Calabasas campus into a 5,000-student liberal arts college is threatened by a zoning violation that alleges the school is already operating beyond its permit, a Los Angeles County zoning official said Wednesday.

The Calabasas school was cited Monday after county officials discovered that it is holding non-religious classes--chiefly English-language classes for about 90 Japanese students--but has a zoning permit that allows religious training only. The school had planned to file an application next month to begin a gradual expansion into a full-fledged college.

But county zoning officials said Wednesday that, under county planning law, they cannot accept an application for changes in land use--such as the planned expansion--when the current use of the land is illegal.

“We cannot review their application or process their application while there’s an existing land-use violation,” said John Calas, chief of zoning enforcement for the county Regional Planning Department. “My interpretation would be that their English classes would be a violation.”

A meeting between county and college officials to discuss the alleged violation is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at the Mulholland Highway campus.

William Ross, a veteran land-use attorney representing Soka University, on Wednesday said that the institution will do “exactly what’s required and probably lots more” to comply with county zoning and planning laws.

However, Ross, who has been involved in many large-scale development projects, questioned the validity of the county’s case against the school, describing it as a “simplistic approach” based on “incomplete research by the inspector.”

Soka University Los Angeles, an offshoot of Soka University in Tokyo, bought the Calabasas meadow in 1986 and last year doubled its holdings in the area to nearly 600 acres, at a cost of more than $40 million.

The school announced plans almost a year ago to grow to 5,000 students by the year 2015, prompting protests from some local residents and parks officials who want the property to become a headquarters for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

The county maintains that the only legal activity on the property is the kind of intense religious-training program typical of a seminary or monastery. That restriction is based on an exception to the agricultural zoning which was granted to the Claretian Missionary Fathers, who ran a seminary there from 1952 to the mid-1970s.

But Ross pointed out that various county planning maps depict the property more generally, as an institution. He also said that one of the school’s buildings is in an area at the corner of the property, at Mulholland Highway and Las Virgenes Road, which is zoned for commercial use. Education is allowed in a commercial zone.

Ross said, and Calas confirmed, that the violation was issued without a visit to the campus, based on information contained in an invitation to the opening of a research center there on Monday. The school has been holding English classes for exchange students from its Tokyo campus for nearly four years.

“The county planning department has known about what Soka was doing for a long time and has been invited onto the property and has never come,” Ross said. “That’s a concern to us.”

Calas said an on-site inspection would be part of the visit Tuesday.

Soka administrators would face a dilemma if they have to prove a strong religious purpose, to meet the conditions of the present permit. In presentations to neighbors and government agencies, they have tried to de-emphasize the school’s financial and philosophical ties to a controversial Buddhist sect known as Nichiren Shoshu of America or Soka Gakkai.

But Ross said the school will argue the definition of a seminary. “That’s an educational function also,” like a school, he said.

In fact, Agoura Hills real estate broker Glen Peterson, who was a student at the seminary, recalled that the Claretians’ four-year college, located on the site for several years, offered classes in subjects such as chemistry and Latin as part of preparation for a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.