University Offers to Donate Land; Park Service Skeptical

The Japanese university that hopes to build a 4,400-student liberal arts college in a Calabasas meadow offered Monday to give the U.S. Park Service--which also wants the land--part of its existing campus and some buildings.

The offer, valued by the school at nearly $20 million, was greeted skeptically by the Park Service, which has long coveted the school’s acreage as the site for a headquarters for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

The land donation was part of an offer unveiled Monday by Soka University that school administrators said is aimed at ending the Park Service’s opposition to the expansion plans.

School representatives first suggested such an option in December and followed up Monday with a detailed proposal that they said would be included in the school’s application to county authorities for building permits.

The offer also included scaling back from the university’s original plan for 5,000 students to 4,400, and donating 71 acres to the Park Service, primarily along Las Virgenes Road south of Mulholland Highway.

In addition, the university offered to build a $2.5-million park headquarters, set aside a $1-million endowment for park maintenance and donate numerous houses, barns, portable classrooms and offices now standing on the land.

Speaking for the university, Bernetta Reade, a senior account executive with the public relations firm Cerrell Associates, described the proposal as a “generous gift.”

“This demonstrates the university’s commitment to trying to resolve this,” Reade said. “It could give the parks what they need and give the university the campus it wants too.”

Regardless of how park officials react to the offer, Reade said it will be included in permit applications, in case the Park Service changes its mind.

Park Service officials said Monday they were still reviewing the proposal, but remained skeptical that such a joint use could work. They also questioned whether the university was trying to buy their cooperation to prevent them from moving to seize the land through public condemnation.

“It’s a great public relations ploy,” said David Gackenbach, superintendent of the National Recreation Area. “Are they trying to buy us out? I don’t know.”

Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said the university had “made a virtue out of a necessity.” He said the county would never have approved campus buildings along Las Virgenes Road because of traffic problems.

“Besides, this doesn’t solve the problem of putting an incompatible use in the heart of the mountains,” Edmiston said.

Gackenbach and Edmiston both said the land may not be usable even for a park headquarters because of a Chumash Indian archeological site thought to be located there. Reade said archeological studies will be part of the environmental review of the project required by the county.

The parks representatives also disputed the estimated value of the proposed gift, saying it was inflated, in part because the university paid more for the property than it was worth.

Soka University of Los Angeles, a division of a Tokyo-based college, began buying land in and around the meadow in April, 1986, and now owns nearly 600 acres. In all, the county tax assessor’s records indicate the university paid at least $43 million for the property.