Soka Plan Scaled Back to 650-Student Campus

Soka University’s proposed expansion plan has been dramatically scaled back to a quarter its original size, a change that cuts traffic impact in half and saves 60 oak trees on the scenic campus.

Details of the revised project are contained in an environmental impact report released in conjunction with the dismissal Friday of a lawsuit between Soka and a state conservation agency, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

The agency had sought to use eminent domain to seize 254 acres of Soka’s 588-acre parcel at Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway. If successful, the state would have acquired the same portion of the land that the private university sought to develop. But there was not enough public money to buy the land, and a settlement, worked out in March, was completed Friday.

In it, Soka agreed to abandon its original plan for a 3,400-student liberal arts college and prep school, in favor of a 650-student language school--a student body half the size of Calabasas High School. About 300 students now attend the university in Calabasas.

The environmental impact report found that the main roads serving the campus, Las Virgenes and Mulholland, would not be adversely affected by traffic, even during special events on campus. The average weekday traffic flow would be about 1,540 vehicles, half of what the larger campus would have generated.

The amount of land to be graded has also been reduced, from 65 acres to 34 acres, the report says.

New construction will be capped at 358,700 square feet, not 1.4 million as had been sought. Existing buildings of 81,000 square feet will be retained.

In addition, the campus will be clustered on 34 acres, with 382 acres dedicated as public parkland.

“This is a very small, microscopic project,” Soka spokesman Jeff Ourvan said of the new proposal. “We hope it will pass.”

If the revised project is approved, it will resolve what Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Director Joseph T. Edmiston has called “the land-use equivalent of thermonuclear war.”

Public agencies charged with protecting parklands have been feuding with Soka ever since the school bought the land in 1986.

Conservancy board Chairwoman Liz Cheadle said both national and state agencies have long wanted the land for the public, but given the economic realities, she endorsed the settlement.

“It really preserves the natural resource values,” Cheadle said. “It would be wonderful for the conservancy to own that property and for it to be parklands, but it’s not going to happen. With that in mind, this is a great result.”

The first public hearing on the environmental impacts of the project is Sept. 11 at 9 a.m. before the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission.

Many key players--the county, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority--have agreed to the plan.

But Cheadle said there is much to be decided. “We still have the right to comment on fencing, things that involve the wildlife corridor, where buildings are sited and how the view shed is protected.”

Soka University, a private school that caters to international students, has decided to locate its liberal arts college and prep school in Orange County, Ourvan said.

The Calabasas campus will be reserved for an immersion language school and, perhaps, a graduate school program.