ANALYSIS : Conservancy Is Facing Tough Choices to Pay for Soka Case

As financial pressure mounts, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is learning the true and painful costs of its campaign to seize Soka University’s scenic Calabasas campus for parkland.

At a marathon meeting that stretched into the early hours Wednesday, the conservancy board mulled a Hobson’s choice: Which of the parks it now owns in Los Angeles and Ventura counties should the conservancy sell to raise funds for the Soka fight?

No decision was made, but the grim discussions pointed up the difficult road the conservancy has chosen to follow as it presses ahead with its condemnation lawsuit against Soka.

“I don’t want anyone leaving this room tonight thinking there is going to be manna from heaven,” board member Jerome C. Daniel told the audience as the six-hour meeting wound down.

The conservancy has been waging a years-long legal fight to seize Soka’s property at Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway, long coveted by state and national parks officials as a visitors center for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Soka, on the other hand, wants to expand its small language school into a liberal arts college and has resisted tenaciously.

To raise cash for the fight, conservancy Executive Director Joseph T. Edmiston presented the board Tuesday with a list of seven properties that could be sold. They ranged from a 2.5-acre parcel worth $225,000 in Cold Creek to 53 acres worth $7.5 million in the Santa Clarita Valley.

“These are odious judgments I don’t believe even Solomon could have solved,” said Edmiston, who characterized the list of seven properties as the “least worst” alternatives.

Selling off parkland is anathema to the conservancy, a state agency that has spent the past 15 years aggressively acquiring and preserving parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding ranges.

But now, locked in a bitter struggle with Soka, the conservancy will be forced to liquidate some of its parkland to prepare for a trial later this year. A judge ruled last month that the conservancy has the right to take 245 acres of the campus, but a Los Angeles Superior Court jury will decide how much Soka must be paid for it.

The conservancy is prepared to pay the appraised value of the property, $19.7 million. But Soka lawyers will argue that the property is worth much more. After the jury sets the price, the conservancy has 30 days to pay it--or give up the effort.

If the jury awards Soka more than the conservancy can immediately afford, however, not only would the sale fall apart, but Soka has promised to sue for damages and to recover its sizable legal bills.

Such a loss would be humiliating for the conservancy and could undermine its credibility in future negotiations with other property owners.

In an effort to lower the stakes, Edmiston suggested late last year that the conservancy settle with the school. But park advocates and longtime supporters of the conservancy raised such a ruckus that the conservancy in the end decided to press ahead.

With no funding help in sight from either Washington or Sacramento, Edmiston and the conservancy board determined that they needed to raise a contingency fund of undetermined size above and beyond the $19.7 million already set aside for the Soka purchase.

One potential source of money--funds from the sale of Paramount Ranch to the National Park Service for $8 million--has already been earmarked to complete the purchase of Canyon Oaks Estates in Topanga Canyon.

Some conservancy board members have suggested defaulting on the purchase of Canyon Oaks, but the board decided Wednesday to honor its agreement with the owner--a Disney family trust--and complete the deal.

Yet selling off parkland is problematic for a number of reasons.

First, the conservancy does not have a very good record when it comes to selling property. One board member joked that the best way to prevent a piece of land from ever being developed was for the conservancy to put it up for sale.

The conservancy has been trying since 1991 to sell a piece of surplus land in Marquez Canyon in Pacific Palisades and since 1992 to sell a parcel in Thousand Oaks. That parcel--the so-called Linfin property--is among those that Edmiston has suggested selling to raise cash for the Soka acquisition.

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Second, it is unlikely that developers will be willing to buy any of the properties the conservancy is considering selling. Any developer who proposed a building project on even a former park inevitably would run into costly opposition.

Even if a developer were interested in any of the properties, it would be unlikely that the developer would pay cash for the land. Standard practice in development circles is to option the land and get an entitlement to build before purchasing the property.

Such a scenario would not work for the conservancy because it needs the cash up front, by autumn at the latest.

Finally, selling parkland would alienate many supporters of the conservancy, who already have taken a dim view of its handling of the Soka affair.

William Wells of the Coalition to Preserve Las Virgenes accused the conservancy of poor planning for not considering the potential costs of the Soka litigation.

“Why was the condemnation suit filed in the first place?” he asked.