Coastal Commission OKs Soka Expansion Plan

Culminating eight years of bitter dispute, the California Coastal Commission gave final approval Thursday to Soka University’s plan to expand its campus in one of the last undeveloped valleys in the Santa Monica Mountains.

At a raucous public hearing, the commission voted 9 to 2 to allow Soka to expand from 350 students to 800, following four hours of debate. The crowd of about 150 was about evenly divided between supporters and critics.

“I’ve never seen so much emotion around a land-use issue before,” commission Chairman Rusty Areias said. “This may be the end of it, but I doubt it.”

The commissioners approved the university’s plan to increase the amount of land the school can build on from 31 to 52 acres; to quintuple its building footage from 81,000 to 440,000 square feet; to set aside 456 acres of open space, including 383 acres of parkland that will eventually be turned over to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and to prohibit development in a 100-foot buffer around environmentally sensitive areas and in a zone around more than 4,000 native oak trees that dot the 588-acre site.

Opponents of expansion termed Thursday’s vote a first step toward total degradation of the mountain area around the campus at Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway.

“The commission approved a university-sized party campus in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area,” said Mark Massara of the Sierra Club’s California Coastal Program.

Massara said he expects the Sierra Club to challenge the commission’s decision in court.

“We’ll keep it up to the bitter end,” he said.

Proponents of Soka’s expansion praised the commission, decrying opponents’ depictions of Soka as a commercial enterprise instead of a learning institution.

“That’s ridiculous,” Soka spokesman Jeff Ourvan said. “We’re a school, always have been and will be. We also have an 11-year history on the site that shows we won’t degrade the area.”

Soka, which offers language and Pacific Rim studies classes, receives funding from Soka Gakkai, a controversial Japanese Buddhist sect. The school now operates out of a cluster of three- and four-story buildings near the center of Soka’s grounds.

But with expansion plans approved, Soka can add at least two dormitories and increase its campus-resident student body to 500, nearly double its current size.

Although a sizable array of opponents, including state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblywoman Sheila James Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), had lined up against Soka’s plan, the school prevailed, in part because of the commission’s belief the school had cooperated with the commission.

“Soka worked cooperatively and positively with our staff and I appreciate that,” commissioner Penny Allen said. “But I’m not saying we have a perfect project.”

Soka’s development, which includes artificial irrigation and nighttime lighting, “will adversely impact the area,” said Travis Longcore, a Los Angeles County Environmental Review Board member.

Dave Brown, a Calabasas planning commissioner and longtime foe of Soka expansion, argued for an independent monitor to ensure Soka’s expansion would not violate its development agreements with the commission.

“We need to make sure it doesn’t become a convention center up there,” he said.

Although the expansion plan calls for monitoring of historical and archeological sites within the school’s grounds, many opponents said they had concerns over the preservation of Native American burial grounds and village remains they said are buried on the campus.

“We want conservation, not excavation,” said Monique Sonoquie of the American Indian Movement. “Maybe Soka students don’t know what’s under their land.”

Soka students, alumni, faculty members and supporters, wearing buttons that said “Yes on Soka,” loudly cheered the commission’s vote.

Although the school’s expansion plans were approved at a public hearing earlier this year, Soka still needed the building permits that were approved by the vote Thursday.

Opponents’ fears, environmental and aesthetic, were fueled when the school announced its plans to expand to 440,000 square feet of building space. Those fears were not allayed when school officials promised not to violate commission admonitions against future growth.

“Do they need that much space for just 800 students?” asked Curtis Horton, an attorney representing the Sierra Club, regional property owners association and others.

The commission voted to require that a 14,000-square-foot maintenance building be built within the existing “development area” but did not require the same of two proposed dormitories planned for an outlying area of campus.

The construction of these two dorms particularly angered opponents, but Soka officials said there was no room for the buildings in the existing development area.

“I hope this is the last time the Coastal Commission hears this matter,” Areias said. “Enough is enough is enough.”