SDSU: North County Campus Plan : Future of SDSU North County Campus Linked to Initiative

San Diego State University officials believe that their plan to build a North County campus hinges on approval of Proposition 56, the $400-million bond issue that goes before voters Nov. 4.

The bond issue represents SDSU’s only realistic chance of raising the estimated $16 million needed to buy about 400 acres of land in San Marcos, where the campus is scheduled to open in 1992, officials said.

“If the bond issue doesn’t go, we’re back to the drawing boards,” said Bill Erickson, vice president of business and financial affairs for SDSU. “We would have to try to get it out of the general fund for 1987-88, and that would be highly unlikely.”

The bond issue measure “really determines whether we’ll be able to meet our obligations in San Diego County or not,” said Albert Johnson, SDSU’s vice president for academic affairs. “We’re jam-packed full here. We can’t do anything more than we’re doing now.”

The bond issue is intended to replace tidelands oil revenues that in the past have funded capital projects for higher education. The dramatic drop in oil prices has cut that revenue to about a quarter of what it used to be.

Failure of the bond issue could delay development of a North County campus by as much as two years, said Erickson, who estimated that the land purchase will cost $16 million. “If we don’t get going on the acquisition in 1987-88, everything bogs down and we have to back it up,” he said.

In the meantime, the price of the land and the number of student applications to SDSU’s already crowded main campus will only increase, he said.

Current plans call for SDSU to open an upper-division satellite campus in 1992 on the site formerly occupied by Prohoroff Poultry Farms. Because of the growing number of potential applicants in North County and Orange County, the site is expected to become a full four-year campus in later years.

Under Proposition 56, $233 million of the revenue raised will be spent on higher-education capital projects in 1986-87, with the rest spent the following year. Backers of a North County campus expect Deukmejian to take the $16 million needed for the land purchase from the $167 million and allocate it in his 1987-88 budget.

“It would be difficult for me to commit the governor,” said state Sen. William Craven (R-Oceanside), who guided the North County campus proposal to legislative approval. “The governor has never said that to me. But if you ask me what I thought, I would presume that would be.”

No bond issue on the ballot has failed since voters rejected a proposal to acquire land at Lake Tahoe in November, 1980, said Caren Daniels-Meade, media director for Secretary of State March Fong Eu. The last rejection of an education bond issue was in June, 1970, she said.

Opponents of Proposition 56 include Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach), who said that money for such capital expenditures should be taken from the general fund. The $400 million borrowed will cost taxpayers about $1.2 million when it is paid off over 20 years, Frizzelle said.

But even Frizzelle expects the measure to be approved.

“I think it’s probably going to pass. But I think the public ought to know what they’re doing. I think they ought to know it’s a bad business deal,” he said.

Approval of the measure will give SDSU, UC San Diego and the county’s community colleges $49 million to spend on capital projects in 1986-87. UCSD’s $30.1-million share is the largest amount allocated to any University of California campus, officials said.

The money will help both UCSD and SDSU catch up with rising enrollments that have come at a time when little or no state funds were available for construction.

“Our undergraduate enrollment has grown by something like 35% in the last five years,” said Harold Ticho, vice chancellor for academic affairs at UCSD. “At the same time, the last state-funded building we had on this campus was completed in 1978.”

A $30-million state-funded engineering building is under construction and is to open in late 1987.

In recruiting faculty members, “one of the big problems we have is lack of facilities for research laboratories and other scholarly activities,” said Bruce Darling, assistant vice chancellor for university relations at UCSD. “As a result, we have actually been turned down by some faculty because we have not been able to offer them research facilities.”

UCSD projects to be funded under Proposition 56 include:

- $17.6 million for plans and construction of an 80,500-square-foot building to house the anthropology, history and political science departments; physics teaching and research laboratories; specialized music studios, and more than 15,000 square feet of classroom space.

- $5 million to partially equip the new engineering building. An additional $4 million will be needed the following year.

- $5.04 million to build administrative and support staff offices at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest. The construction will save the university about $500,000 annually by allowing it to move staff members out of rented office space.

SDSU projects include:

- $7.1 million to construct a classroom and office building that would house several programs now scattered around the campus. The move would free up badly needed space in the campus library.

- $3.6 million to modernize the 56-year-old Life Science Building and bring it up to current earthquake and building code standards.

Community college projects include:

- $4.7 million for the San Elijo Center at MiraCosta College, which would provide 44,000 square feet of classroom, laboratory and support space in a rapidly growing part of the county.

- $3.4 million for an office and library building at Cuyamaca College.