Parks Agency Votes to Force Soka to Sell Part of Campus Site : Hearing: The action sets up a race to institute condemnation proceedings. A court next week will determine if the 244 acres near Calabasas can be seized.

A mountain parks authority has cleared the way to condemn part of Soka University’s campus for parkland, but whether the authority can carry out the action depends on a court hearing on Tuesday.

After a heated three-hour hearing at the Las Virgenes Unified School District headquarters, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority voted unanimously Tuesday night to force Soka to sell 244 acres of its land near Calabasas.

“We’re here this evening to preserve something,” said authority board member George Lange, referring to the campus site minutes before the vote was taken. “If it’s taken away, it’ll never come back.”

The vote set up a last-minute race to formally institute condemnation proceedings before a new state law takes effect late next week, which could force park authorities to pay millions of dollars more for the land.

Before and after the meeting, attended by more than 100 people, Soka supporters staged a candlelight vigil outside the meeting room, featuring a child’s playhouse shrouded in black cloth and a sign that read: “R.I.P. Private Property Rights.”

“I’m really furious,” said Gail Holloway of Encino. “This is a land grab. . . . I would like Mr. Edmiston to get his pack of wolves out of there.”

Joseph T. Edmiston, executive officer of the authority, had urged the condemnation vote on behalf of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state park agency he heads that wants to acquire the land for a federal park headquarters. The condemnation action against Soka is the first in the conservancy’s 13-year history.

“This is a monumental step,” he said. “I don’t think any of us take it lightly.”

Soka, a Tokyo-based school that wants to build a 3,400-student high school and college on the meadow property, has fought a seven-year battle with federal and state parks agencies over the land, which is the core of its holdings of nearly 600 acres.

The school has staked its hopes on a court challenge to the authority’s legal right to condemn the land.

The authority sought approval of the condemnation proceeding from the Ventura County Board of Supervisors--even though the land is in Los Angeles County--because the mountains authority is a joint-powers agency that includes two Ventura park districts and the conservancy.

The school filed suit to overturn the supervisors’ approval, and that claim will be the subject of the hearing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in Ventura County Superior Court.

If the Ventura County supervisors’ approval is overturned, that would also invalidate the authority’s vote. That would leave the conservancy with the option of starting anew in 1993, but a new state law that takes effect Jan. 1 regarding condemnation of property owned by nonprofit entities could add $10 million to the Soka price tag. The condemnation proceedings began after the school rejected the authority’s offer of $19.7 million for the land.