Soka Buys Land in Orange County : Education: The university plans to build a 100-acre campus there after Calabasas expansion was rebuffed.

After four years of trying unsuccessfully to expand its campus in Calabasas, Soka University of America announced Tuesday it has purchased 100 acres in Aliso Viejo to build a liberal arts college and graduate school specializing in Pacific Rim studies.

“Soka will be one of the first universities in the country built from the ground up that will concentrate in Pacific Rim studies,” Soka University spokesman Jeff Ourvan said. “We plan to have a very diverse international student body with people from a lot of different cultures.”

The university, which will be built over the next 25 years starting this fall, will be located at the southwest tip of Wood Canyon Drive overlooking the Aliso and Wood Canyon Regional Park.

When it opens in 1999 with 300 students, it will be the first private university with a full campus in south Orange County. Eventually, it is projected to have an enrollment of 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students.

College officials say 400 permanent faculty and administrative jobs will be created.

Although college officials had previously disclosed their desire to relocate to unincorporated Aliso Viejo, a community of about 22,000 people, it wasn’t known until Tuesday that escrow had closed on the land purchase from the Mission Viejo Co. The price of the property was kept confidential.

“The university promises to be a dynamic economic force in south Orange County,” said County Supervisor Marian Bergeson of the 5th District, which includes Aliso Viejo.

Steve Dickey, president of the Aliso Viejo Community Assn., said the university will be a “tremendous addition to the community.”

“Our planning committee reviewed their site plans and the committee told Soka University that we just wish they were building all of those great facilities right now instead of gradually,” Dickey said.

When it is completed, according to officials, the Japan-based liberal arts college will include a 250,000-volume library specializing in Pacific Rim issues, as well as a 2,000-seat performing arts center, dormitories, an art gallery, an alumni center, administration buildings and sports facilities.

The university also plans to relocate its Pacific Basin Research Center, which it operates jointly with Harvard University, from its Calabasas campus to the Aliso Viejo campus, Ourvan said.

He said the university will offer undergraduate students classes in Pacific Rim studies and languages, including Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Also, it will have courses in international relations, public policy, philosophy, anthropology and sociology, as well as a master’s degree program in education, Ourvan said.

The university has a 300-student campus in Calabasas, where it offers classes in education and foreign languages, and post-doctorate studies at the Pacific Basin Research Center.

College officials wanted to expand the Calabasas campus into a liberal arts college for about 3,400 students but met with resistance from local residents and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which has won the right to buy 245 of the campus’s 660 acres.

The conservancy wants to use the land for a public park.