Campus Faces Opposition Despite CSU’s Warning : Education: Frustrated by environmentalists’ objections to Cal State’s proposed Taylor Ranch center, Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds is demanding an outpouring of local support.

In the wake of a demand for support by California State University Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds, some groups are forming to mount a campaign for a Cal State campus at Taylor Ranch in Ventura.

But those opposed to the university site were not moved by an ultimatum issued by Reynolds.

In a series of meetings last week with local civic leaders, Reynolds and her top aide, Vice Chancellor Jack Smart, said the university would drop its plans for expansion in Ventura County without a firm show of support for the site, which has been criticized on environmental grounds.

“We have done an exhaustive search for sites,” she said. “Now we need an outpouring of community support. We need to be loved a little.”

Reynolds said she wants to see that outpouring, in the form of letters to Cal State trustees and local elected officials, as well as other demonstrations of community backing, in the next six weeks.

Since then, a 35-member group calling itself the Victory Alliance and another group called Save the University have organized to raise funds for a professional public relations campaign, said Jim Salzer, a local businessman who is an emerging leader of the movement. The campaign would aim to persuade elected officials and the public that the university would offer more benefits than problems, he said.

“Our politicians are running scared,” said Salzer. “They have all been hesitant to take a stand because of the seemingly awesome ability of one local business, Yvon Chouinard and Patagonia, to marshal support for anti-growth issues.”

Chouinard, whose outdoor-clothing and mountaineering gear companies employ about 500 people, helped elect three no-growth candidates to the Ventura City Council last month. Those council members continue to express serious reservations about a Cal State campus at Taylor Ranch.

“I come down on the side of the preservation of Ventura over a university,” said council member Cathy Bean. “I think of Ventura as the jewel of the county and I see no reason to take it and crush it in the dust.”

Ventura County Supervisor Susan Lacey, whose district includes the city of Ventura and the Taylor Ranch, affirmed her support of a university in the county, but stopped short of endorsing Taylor Ranch.

“Without the environmental impact report,” she said, “you do not have the information upon which to make that decision.”

However, without evidence of community support there will be no further study, Reynolds said.

“We are not even going to go ahead with the second EIR unless we get a strong sense that the community wants this university first,” Reynolds said at a reception last week at the Cal State Northridge, Ventura campus.

When the university performed its first EIR for Taylor Ranch, the study looked only at the impact of a two-year center. A court order now requires an expanded report that would study the impact of a full, four-year university.

Joyce Kennedy, director of the two-year Cal State center in Ventura, called Reynolds’ decision to stop the site discussions reasonable.

“We cannot plow the same territory over and over again in terms of searching for sites,” she said. “We’ve had 15 years to think about the university in terms of the needs of the county.”

The university chose Taylor Ranch after a years-long search. It first bought land in the county in 1979 in the Somis area. At that time, the state decided the county did not need a full university and sold the land. It left a two-year program, which offers upper-division classes for bachelors’ and advanced degrees in Ventura.

The new campus would educate the equivalent of about 15,000 full-time students, most of them from Ventura County, Reynolds said. Its hillside location would limit its size, she added.

A smaller school of 8,000 students advocated by some would not provide what Reynolds called the “critical mass” necessary to a university. Degrees in disciplines like business administration and environmental studies would be unavailable, she said.

The university is negotiating with Santa Barbara heiress Cynthia Wood and other family members for 465 acres at Taylor Ranch, which the Wood family owns. The property likely will be condemned in what university officials are describing as a “friendly” procedure.

In an effort to assuage some environmental concerns, the university plans to buy an additional 300 acres owned by members of the August Ferro family just west of the Taylor Ranch. The property would provide a buffer between the fragile estuary of the Ventura River and the activities of the university, Reynolds said. Now cultivated for avocados, it could be returned to its natural state, or be used for a park, she said.

That makes the proposition more attractive, said Kevin Sweeney, public affairs director for Patagonia.

“But once you build on the other side of the river, it will bring more development,” he said. Patagonia contends the university “did a poor job of site selection.”

Newly elected Ventura City Councilman Todd Collart, a former planning commissioner who was also elected on the Patagonia anti-growth slate, said a completed EIR is essential to decide whether to support the Taylor Ranch site.

“Water is the biggest stumbling block,” Collart said. “You can deal with housing and traffic problems, but if you don’t have water, you don’t have water.”

If residents or elected officials do support the Taylor Ranch site before the EIR is completed, Collart said it would amount to a “hollow commitment.”

Everett Millais, director of community development for the city of Ventura, said the university will likely look outside the city for water sources. The city could now support a small two-year campus, he said, but not a 15,000-student campus, even if it took 30 years to reach that point.

If a larger campus were built, he said, additional water might be yielded from new wells on the site, a contract with the Casitas Water District, or the purchase of water rights belonging to Shell Oil Co., which leases the mineral rights on the Taylor Ranch.

Campus supporters hope such issues won’t derail the university permanently.

“It would be an educational and a cultural and economic resource that would be unmatched in the history of Ventura County,” said Julius Gius, a university supporter who is the retired editor of the Ventura County Star-Free Press. “The time for commitment by the people who believe we should have a university has come. They have got to let their feelings be known.”