Asphalt and Oranges : Growth: Defenders of a CSUN citrus grove say it is a part of Valley history and shouldn’t be plowed under for a parking lot.

The survey question seemed to come as a surprise at a student government meeting in March: Should the Cal State Northridge orange grove be plowed under as part of the school’s five-year expansion plans?

For student senator Jim Lindsay, the answer to university administrators’ survey of students, faculty and staff was simple: The 500-tree grove must be saved. On his survey, Lindsay urged the preservation of the three-acre grove for the sake of the environment and San Fernando Valley history.

“I was sort of awe-struck, almost like they had no respect for what the orchard stands for,” Lindsay, 22, said of the administration.

School planners, however, contend that the grove near the university’s main entrance at Nordhoff Street and Lindley Avenue is near the end of its natural life. Scores of trees have already died from age and disease, and about 40% no longer produce fruit, said Bill Chatham, CSUN associate vice president of facilities, planning and operations.

In addition, and more to the point, the 50-year-old grove occupies precious space that could be used by any of several building projects proposed for the next five years to serve the ever-growing student population. The number of students attending CSUN has jumped from fewer than 29,000 in 1985 to more than 31,000 this year.

Among a number of campus projects under discussion is the construction of a $49-million visual and performing arts center on land next to the grove. Part of the grove might then be replaced by a parking structure serving that complex, according to the proposal. Other potential building sites on campus are likely to be earmarked for other capital improvement projects, administrators said.

But critics insist that the grove is not so expendable and must be saved and replanted with younger trees. To destroy or reduce it, they insist, would rob the campus of much of its distinctive character.

“I think that Cal State Northridge is a rather humdrum-looking campus,” said Warren Bland, a CSUN geography professor and member of the school’s Faculty Senate. “These buildings are functional, but they are not architectural gems, for the most part. One of the few things that sets off this campus, that gives it uniqueness, is the historic orange grove.”

Bland added that the orange trees now stand as lonely relics of the Valley’s past, when the area was home to almost 15,000 acres of citrus.

The completed surveys--as well as discussions with campus planning consultants and groups of students and faculty--will help Chatham and his staff determine the shape of a master plan proposal to be submitted Wednesday to CSUN President James W. Cleary.

Meanwhile, the Associated Students Senate passed a non-binding resolution April 23 recommending that a parking structure be built beneath the proposed arts complex, rather than on the grove property. Lindsay and Fabio Escobar, founding members of the new campus Green Party club, are helping circulate a petition urging that the orange grove be spared.

“They sign it almost without reading it,” Lindsay said after gathering signatures with fellow club members during the CSUN Earth Day environmental fair April 21. “They are very shocked and surprised,” he said, when they hear that the grove might be destroyed.

The CSUN Greens are also promoting the expanded and continued use of oranges picked in the groves for local charities. They hope to involve a wide variety of campus organizations in the project.

“These oranges have been used for a lot of years for different people in the neighborhood. They’ve been handed out to the elderly, homeless groups, and anybody who needs them, basically. It provides a service that is really needed,” said Escobar, 20, a sophomore philosophy/political science major who wrote a March editorial in the student newspaper opposing any move to reduce or destroy the citrus grove.

Concern about protecting the CSUN grove from development is not a new topic on campus. In 1971, orange groves located at the east and west ends of campus were cut down for parking lots. Two years ago geography professor Robert Gohstand wrote a widely read letter to the school administration listing reasons for keeping the grove intact.

“So little of the San Fernando Valley has been preserved,” Gohstand said last week. “We can point to the San Fernando Mission, and that’s it. The old agricultural towns have been bulldozed into the ground. The fields are gone. So the grove has historical value.”

Until the early 1980s, the campus contracted with commercial citrus growers to pick and sell the orange crop in return for basic maintenance of the grove, Chatham said. But as the orange trees have aged, productivity dropped and the professional growers eventually lost interest. Consequently, the orange grove has had only the barest of care, reduced mainly to weed control for fire prevention and a minimum of watering.

“We get no particular funding to maintain the orange grove,” Chatham said. “Orange groves, in order to be productive, require significant care and maintenance in terms of pruning, spraying and other annual stroking and care.

“We have effectively reduced maintenance to the bare minimum.”

Without sufficient funding to take care of the existing trees, Chatham said, it seems certain that the money needed to replace the old trees with new ones would be difficult to locate. But grove supporters insist that a full effort to find outside support has not been made. Gohstand said he was willing to contact local nurseries to see if they might donate replacement trees.

In a meeting with a Faculty Senate subcommittee last week, Chatham suggested that a two-level parking structure built on part of the present grove could help raise funds for care of the remainder.

“He told me that we probably couldn’t save the whole orange grove,” said Bland, a CSUN faculty member for 23 years. “But if we could make part of it into a parking lot, some of the revenue could be used to reconstitute what was left of the orange grove.”

Still, Bland wanted to see the specifics of such a plan before endorsing it. “I’m not really in favor of chopping down orange groves on campuses to build parking lots,” he said. “I do understand their problem, though.”

That problem, said Elliot Mininberg, vice president of administration and university advancement, is that “we’ve got an enormous population to serve with inadequate facilities.”

Mininberg added that the school is trying to keep pace with the growing student population with several projects--including additions in student housing, for the Oviatt Library, the bookstore, the University Student Union, and multilevel parking structures--made possible by the passage of key statewide bond issues for campus construction.

The first of these three higher-education capital-outlay initiatives, 1986’s Proposition 56, provided $400 million for state campuses. In 1988, Proposition 78 earmarked an additional $600 million, while Proposition 121 in 1990 generated another $450 million.

The visual and performing arts complex and adjacent parking facility are being considered as part of a proposed five-year plan for the school.

“This is catch-up for us,” Mininberg said last week. “And even with all the activity on campus, believe it or not, we are going to end up with deficiencies until many more facilities over time are able to be implemented.”

Added Bland: “I certainly approve of the construction in principle. The campus has been starved for a couple of decades of much state support for construction. And we badly need the buildings that are going up.

“I am certainly concerned about the loss of open space. But obviously you can’t hang new buildings from cables in the sky. You’ve got to put them somewhere.”

Whatever the outcome of the survey, and the recommendation of Chatham, Mininberg insisted that some small part of the grove would be preserved as a memorial.

“We have needs that have to be satisfied, and we have a moral commitment to something that is historically commemorative,” Mininberg said. “Those need to be balanced, and I would try to find a middle ground.”

Final approval of the proposed campus physical master plan will come from Cleary, who agreed to protect the last remaining grove on Nordhoff after the other tracts of orange trees were cut for parking space in 1971. “Rather than eliminating all the orange groves, he made a commitment that he would preserve them,” explained CSUN spokeswoman Kaine Thompson of the 20-year-old decision. “And that’s why he’s now having a hard time changing his mind on that. He’s sort of caught in the middle here.”

The university president, who is recuperating from a recent back injury, was unavailable for comment. But he issued a statement through Thompson indicating that he wanted “to live up to that commitment. I am uncomfortable with the current configuration of trees being proposed.”

He added, “I think it is very important in retaining a bit of the history of the Valley.”

Appleford is a regular contributor to Valley View.