Parks Authority Delays Soka Vote
About 80 people turned out Monday night for a debate over whether state park officials should use condemnation proceedings to seize part of the campus of Soka University, a Japanese-owned school that has refused to sell 244 acres near Calabasas to state and federal agencies.
The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority met to consider the issue, but so many people wanted to speak that members postponed the vote for a week.
Heavily involved in the debate is a controversy over whether Soka should be allowed to expand the campus from a language program for about 175 students into a high school and four-year liberal arts college for up to 3,400 students.
The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that buys land for state and federal parks, has tried for six years to buy the school’s main campus for use as a Santa Monica Mountains park headquarters. Soka has refused to sell.
The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority--the mountain conservancy’s decision-making wing--made an $18.7-million offer on the property Oct. 30 and gave school administrators until Nov. 8 to respond.
The next step for the conservancy would be condemnation proceedings, but in its 12-year history, the conservancy has never employed such power to force.
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