SOKA UNIVERSITY EXPANSION GOOD DEAL FOR EVERYONE.

Byline: Jeff Ourvan

THE California Coastal Commission will decide this week whether to approve a modest expansion of Soka University's Calabasas campus.

The debate over the university's fate has been ongoing since 1990, and the commission's approval is the last step in a regulatory process that has largely incorporated the concerns of local residents. The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority has settled its eminent domain suit against the university, and Los Angeles County last year approved a much-reduced campus plan.

It seems as if there isn't a single patch of ground in the vicinity of the Santa Monica Mountains that someone doesn't have spiritual, environmental, developmental or visual claim upon. But what's sometimes lost in the specific fray of the Soka University battle is that this proposal contemplates a school - one which will bring considerable educational and cultural benefits to the region.

California, within the next 10 years, will have to make room for 500,000 more high school graduates for whom existing colleges and universities don't have accommodations. While the state's economy continues to improve, the cost of building more classrooms and dormitories also goes up. State-supported institutions, dependent on tax revenues, will be hard-pressed to meet the demand. Private institutions, therefore, will need to bear some of that burden.

Soka University's focus on Pacific Rim studies will moreover become increasingly vital to a region for which trade with Asia is an economic cornerstone. Soka University purchased its 588-acre campus between 1987 and 1990 and invested more than $12 million to restore what had become run-down land and structures.

The university operates a graduate school on campus, as well as foreign language classes for U.S. and international students. Its Pacific Basin research center is managed in conjunction with Harvard University, and its botanical research center and nursery maintains a spectacular native plant garden and the most diverse repository of native seeds in the region.

The proposal before the Coastal Commission - for which its staff has recommended approval - was hammered out over more than seven years of public review and contentious debate. Both support and opposition have been voiced in innumerable public hearings. Those comments led to significant project revisions through the leadership of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and former Congressman Anthony Beilenson.

The proposed plan protects the environment. The public gains more than 400 acres of open space at no cost to the taxpayer. The university is restricted to 650 full-time students - about the size of Lupin Hill Elementary School in Calabasas - or a student population proportional to practically one student per acre. Trails will be improved and constructed in the open space area, and not one of the more than 4,000 oak trees on campus will be removed or damaged.

The university has also agreed to limit its plans to the proposal before the Coastal Commission for a 25-year period - something not requested or required of any other property owner in the Santa Monica Mountains. And the university further agreed to state-of-the-art environmental control and monitoring that will become the standard for every project to follow.

Soka University has for years established itself as an asset to the community through its Human Rights Lecture Series, its nature walks, its business seminars and the hosting of events like the California Traditional Music Society's Summer Solstice Festival. Library facilities, a small auditorium and unlighted athletic facilities will also be available to the community in the future if this proposal is approved.

There is a need for classroom space for prospective students. There is a need to prepare them for participation in the Pacific Rim marketplace. The public desires greater access to the ridges and valleys of the Santa Monica Mountains. The Soka University proposal responds to each of these. Hopefully the California Coastal Commission will agree.