State Park Agency Offers $18.7 Million for Soka Site : Santa Monicas: University officials are expected to reject the deal. The proposal is contingent on approval of a ballot measure Tuesday.
A state park agency on Friday offered $18.7 million for part of the Soka University campus in the Santa Monica Mountains, but school officials repeated past assertions that the site near Calabasas is not for sale.
Moreover, Joseph T. Edmiston, executive officer of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority--which made the offer--said if the Los Angeles County parks assessment measure known as Proposition A does not pass in Tuesday’s election, the offer will have to be withdrawn.
“If Prop. A doesn’t pass . . . we move on to other issues,†Edmiston said. “The conservancy has essentially zero land acquisition dollars right now except for things where we’ve already signed on the dotted line.â€
The proposition would raise $540 million for park improvements in Los Angeles County through a $12.52 annual assessment of property owners. Although money from the measure would not be used directly to purchase the 244 acres, Edmiston said it would free other federal funds controlled by the conservation authority, which is the purchasing arm of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.
The offer is nearly $1 million less than what the Tokyo-based school paid for the land in 1986 and does not reflect any of the improvements to buildings and landscaping made since, which the school estimates have cost about $12 million.
School representatives said they would forward the offer to their board of directors in Japan for a formal response, but doubted the offer would be received warmly.
“I don’t think there’s any change, and I don’t think this offer will make any difference to them at all,†said attorney Hodge Dolle, a condemnation expert representing the school. “If anything, they’ll see this as curious, because they’ve made it clear what their intent would be.â€
The school wants to expand from a language program for about 175 students to a high school and four-year college for up to 3,400 students. It owns more than 330 surrounding acres, much of which is to be left as open space under a permit application submitted to county planners. It also has a purchase option on 20 additional acres where it wants to build faculty housing.
The conservancy wants to acquire the sylvan meadow and its historic Gillette Mansion for a national park headquarters.
Making an offer is the first step required in the process of seizing land through condemnation, though Edmiston declined to discuss whether his agency intends to proceed in that direction.
He also declined to discuss why the offer was made now. On Jan. 1, however, a new state law will require public agencies to provide nonprofit groups with enough money to rebuild in the same area whenever property is condemned. Edmiston has said in the past that the legislation could add $10 million to the value of the Soka parcel.
Park officials and real estate brokers have long said they believed the school paid too much for the land in the first place, based on appraisals of the Soka property and of other land nearby. On Friday, Edmiston said the slump in the Southern California real estate market also had to be considered.
“The world is different now,†he said. “You can’t simply say, ‘We bought at a certain price.’ There are a lot of people who, if they had to sell in this market . . . would not get anything close to what they paid for it.â€
Property improvements are taken into consideration in appraisals, but in this case, Edmiston said, the appraiser determined that the highest-value use for the land would be as a housing development. The improvements to the existing buildings would become irrelevant if they were replaced by houses.
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