Panel OKs School’s Expansion in Santa Monica Mountains

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 in Long Beach, the commission voted 9-2, after four hours of debate, to allow Soka to expand from 350 students to 800.

The crowd of 150 was about evenly divided between supporters and critics.

“I’ve never seen so much emotion around a land use issue before,” said commission Chairman Rusty Areias. “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 square feet 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 the more than 4,000 native oak trees that dot the 588-acre site.

Opponents of expansion termed the 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 the university as a commercial enterprise instead of a learning institution.

Soka, which offers language and Pacific Rim studies classes, receives funding from Soka Gakkai, a controversial Japanese Buddhist sect.

University spokesman Jeff Ourvan called allegations that the institution is primarily commercial “ridiculous.”

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

Now, the school operates out of a cluster of three- and four-story buildings near the center of its 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 entire current enrollment.

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

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

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

Dave Brown, Calabasas’ planning commissioner and longtime foe of Soka expansion, argued for an independent monitor to ensure that the development would not violate the school’s 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 expressed concern for a Native American burial ground and village remains that 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.”

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

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

Opponents’ fears, environmental and aesthetic, were stoked when the school first announced its plans to expand to 440,000 square feet of building space.

Those concerns 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, a regional property owners association and others.

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

The construction of those dorms particularly angered opponents, but Soka officials said there was no room for them 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.”