There is no quieter corner of Pasadena than the residential blocks above the suddenly blossoming retail and restaurant row along Washington Boulevard east of Hill Avenue.

The wee hideaway cottages and tree-lined streets, mostly empty of traffic, make neighboring Bungalow Heaven look like Manhattan’s Upper East Side at rush hour.

Bounded by Elizabeth and Howard streets on the north and south and Wesley and Oxford Avenues on the west and east, there is one looming factor, though: The 15-acre campus of what is now called William Carey International University.

Locals will recall it in previous iterations as the longtime home of Pasadena College, now Point Loma Nazarene University, and later as a onetime home to Maranatha High School.

But of all the colleges in Pasadena — including Caltech, Art Center, Fuller Seminary, PCC — there is not one that has less of an impact, culturally or logistically, than William Carey. Most Pasadenans have no idea it is there.

And, hearing that the property has been on the market is what has worried neighbors. Would there be some new boomtown in their backyard?

But news I got Tuesday will set their minds at ease. In fact, just who the purchaser is was the lead excitement factor for Pasadena Councilwoman Margaret McAustin, who represents the neighborhood and who would have caught holy hell if any kind of mega-developer were the purchaser.

“It’s an international boarding school!” McAustin told me. “A high school. And they have a strict rule for students — no driving, no cars!”

Traffic, of course, is what a local politician hears about most from constituents. And no drivers among the students from all over the world — who come 2020 or so will be living here at what will be known as the EF Academy Pasadena — means no traffic. Or no new traffic, and likely even less than the campus now generates.

But it’s not like it will be a small operation. Within a few years there will be 1,000 mostly international students there. And in a fine move for the headmaster and teachers, the school is also buying up housing on Oxford Avenue for its teachers and staff.

I met Tuesday with McAustin and two EF staffers — Shawna Marino, a vice president based in Boston, and its Southern California real estate expert, Jessica Hazelton. They had been looking forever for the right local campus — our region is quite a potential draw for families and students.

“This was the first place in years of looking to be a perfect fit,” Hazelton told me.

“I remember the call from Jess — she was screaming. ‘15 perfect acres!’ ” Marino said with a laugh.

Never heard of EF, which stands for Education First? Me neither. But it’s huge. It’s a for-profit enterprise, founded by Bertil Hult, a Swede, in the early 1960s. An indifferent student who struggled with books because he was dyslexic, he was sent by a boss to do business in London. He’d always had trouble learning English. But by being put in the right cultural context, he quickly became fluent. When he got back home, at the age of 23, he founded EF as a language and study-abroad school.

He’s now a billionaire, and there are EFs all over the world, including near Oxford, in New York and Boston and in Santa Barbara. The schools have about 40,000 employees in 53 countries.

And now in Pasadena. Or, rather, soon. I went up to the campus Tuesday to wander around. Architecturally it’s a hodgepodge of minorly bad ’60s and ’70s dorms and outbuildings surrounding the very Pasadena McGavran Hall, a Mediterranean three-story, perhaps from the ’20s, that will look nice, fixed up.

This will be a slow process, the EF reps said. The real estate deal will be a “long close,” with students from William Carey and smaller schools it leases to around through the next academic year at least. When the boarding school opens, perhaps in 2020, it will have a few hundred students, growing over the years. They will be from all over the world, with no one country making up more than about 10 percent of the student body. EF will join Flintridge Sacred Heart in the Linda Vista hills and Southwestern Academy in San Marino as a local boarding school — are there others I am forgetting?

Neighbors are invited to an open house Thursday, April 19, 7 to 9 p.m., to hear more news.

Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com.