Soka University Won’t Give Up Mountain Site : Development: School announces expansion plans and ends talks with officials who want land for park headquarters.

Soka University administrators have announced that they will forge ahead with plans to build a 4,400-student campus in a mountain meadow near Calabasas, bitterly rejecting “intimidation and harassment” by state and federal officials seeking to acquire the site for a park headquarters.

In a sharply worded letter to three parks agencies, university General Director Hiroshi Okayasu formally rejected two alternative sites for the campus suggested by parks officials. The letter broke off negotiations over the site with parks officials who have long coveted the 580-acre Soka campus for the headquarters of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

Okayasu also ruled out negotiations on any other alternative sites. “We are advised that we need not tolerate attempted intimidation or harassment by officials whose purpose is to thwart any private use of our property as an alternative to its forthright acquisition for park use,” Okayasu wrote.

The letter, dated Wednesday, was sent to officials of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the state Department of Parks and Recreation and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. It was released at a news conference held Wednesday to announce that, as expected, the school plans to expand on part of the campus located along Las Virgenes Road south of Mulholland Highway.

Currently, about 100 students from Japan study English there, living in dormitories nestled amid serene and rustic hills.

But, continuing a compromise attempt, administrators of the Tokyo-based school repeated an offer aimed at winning the support of the National Park Service, which oversees the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Under that offer, the university, among other things, would donate 71 acres of land for a park, build a $2.5-million park headquarters, set aside a $1-million endowment for park maintenance and donate 20 campus buildings to the park service.

But park service officials already have said they are not interested in the offer. Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parkland acquisition agency, said the officials were still interested in the entire campus site. But he would not speculate on what steps the agencies would take to acquire the land.

Soka officials filed a formal request Thursday with Los Angeles County for the permits to build the campus. The review of the request is expected to take at least 18 months.

Soka spokeswoman Bernetta Reade outlined the university’s plans for 4,400 students, a reduction from the 5,000 students proposed earlier, offering to accept a formal cap on enrollment. “There will not be more than 4,400 students,” Reade said.

The university would be expanded in five phases through 2015. The plans call for 1.7 million square feet of office, dormitory and classroom space, plus three parking structures. Buildings would not exceed three stories.

Reade said the plan respects the natural setting of the university and calls for minimal grading and destruction of habitat. Roads and buildings will occupy only 44.6 acres of the site, she said.

To reduce traffic on two-lane Mulholland Highway, only 25% of the students would be allowed to keep a car on campus, Reade said. All 4,400 students and 45 of the 484 employees would live on campus.

The site has 4,227 oak trees. The plan calls for chopping down or relocating 75 oaks, but replanting would increase the overall oak population to 4,383 when the project is completed, Reade said.

Edmiston said the university’s figures on oak trees buttress arguments by parks officials that the area should become a park. “This shows the value of the property,” said Edmiston of the university’s permit application. “There are 4,227 oak trees. That’s a forest.”