Land Dispute to Delay Cal State Campus : Camarillo: Man who owns more than two-thirds of the 200 acres sought has rejected the state’s purchase offer.

A dispute over the price of a 140-acre lemon grove just west of Camarillo will delay the opening of a new Cal State University campus in Ventura County by at least a year, according to a college official.

Santa Barbara resident Michael Mohseni, who owns more than two-thirds of the 200 acres sought by Cal State for a new campus, has rejected the state’s purchase offer, said David Leveille, Cal State’s director of institutional relations.

The impasse after six months of negotiations over a fair price for Mohseni’s land has pushed back the timetable for opening the campus to at least 1996, a year later than expected, Leveille said.

The possibility of future state funding problems could push the start date back even further, Leveille said.

“Quite frankly, if you add the fiscal aspects of resources available for this, 1996 may be optimistic,” he said.

Although he refused to state the final price offered Mohseni, Leveille acknowledged that the property has been appraised by a state agency at $25,000 per acre. That would be an appraised value of $3.5 million for 140 acres.

The university will probably use eminent domain powers to seize Mohseni’s lemon grove if he continues to oppose the sale of his land, Leveille said. Under eminent domain, a state agency may move to acquire a private property for public use, even when such sale is involuntary.

Cal State trustees selected the so-called Duntley-Chaffee site near Camarillo in September after a seven-year search. Trustee Anthony M. Vitti, chairman of the site selection committee, warned then that Cal State would drop its efforts in the county if it faced further delays.

While Leveille acknowledged that eminent domain procedures could slow acquisition of the site, he said it probably would not jeopardize the project. “I’m not sure at this point if eminent domain would be viewed by our board as a snag or as part of the process.”

Trustees will probably vote on whether to start condemnation action at their May meeting, Leveille said. “We’ll have more insight into their perspective after that,” he said.

State officials had hoped to strike a sale with Mohseni by January, Leveille said. But Mohseni, through an attorney, turned down an offer sent to him in February, saying he wanted more money for the property, Leveille said.

Mohseni stands to gain lucrative tax advantages by resisting initial purchase offers, according to legal experts. The landowner could qualify for capital gains deferral with the Internal Revenue Service and the State Franchise Board on the profit from the sale by taking an opposition stance, experts in eminent domain law said.

George Steers, a Seattle-based attorney who represents Mohseni, said his client believes Cal State is “sincerely interested” in his property, but the offer made did not represent his view of a fair price.

State officials also did not address other concerns expressed by Mohseni, so Mohseni rejected that offer, Steers said. Steers did not explain what the other concerns were.

No matter what sales price Mohseni eventually receives, it will have to fit into the state’s $7-million appropriation to acquire a site, Leveille said. Environmental studies and other costs incurred during the five-year search to locate a site have already eaten up $1 million, Leveille said. Another $1 million will be set aside to cover any real estate fees associated with the sale and the cost of any hazardous waste cleanup that may be necessary, he said.

Land costs and the shrinking budget for land appropriation forced Cal State to pare the projected size of the campus from 320 to 200 acres, Leveille said.

Spending authority for the remaining $6 million put aside for land acquisition and related costs expires in June, but obtaining reauthorization should not be difficult, said Beverly O’Gorman, an aide to state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara). Hart sponsored the 1985 legislation to set aside the funds to buy property for a Ventura County campus.

“One good argument is that progress has been made, although it is not as much progress as we would want,” O’Gorman said. “We’ll pull out all the stops to keep that money.”

It will be even tougher finding state money to build the campus once the land is acquired, said Colleen Bentley-Adler, a Cal State spokeswoman. All of California’s public education systems have been hit hard by the recession, including Cal State’s 20 campuses, she said. Analysts are predicting a $186-million funding shortfall for the Cal State system in the coming year.

Proposition 153, a higher-education bond issue on the June ballot, includes a $350,000 appropriation to pay for preliminary planning at the Ventura County campus, she said. If that measure fails, the timetable for opening the campus may be set back even further, she said.

The initial campus will serve 2,000 juniors, seniors and graduate students, state officials have said. Cal State proposes to develop that over several years into a four-year institution serving 20,000.

Although Leveille declined to discuss the state’s negotiations with the campus site’s second landowner, Sakioka Farms, a source told The Times the Camarillo-based company has verbally agreed to sell Cal State the other 60 acres it wants. Representatives of Sakioka Farms did not return repeated calls to their office.

Other aspects of the acquisition process are going smoothly, Leveille said. Cal State officials have been meeting regularly with representatives from Camarillo, Oxnard and the county to determine how services, such as water and sewer lines, will be delivered to the campus.

State and county officials also have been lobbying lawmakers in Washington to speed up funding for a federal flood control project that will eliminate shallow winter flooding at the site, Leveille said. Completion of the Santa Clara Drain will cost about $9.5 million, he said.

The Duntley-Chaffee site won endorsement from Cal State trustees after two other controversial selections had to be abandoned. The so-called Lusk site near Ventura Harbor was chosen in 1987, but trustees dropped it after nearby residents opposed the selection.

The trustees’ second choice, the ocean-view Taylor Ranch just west of Ventura, also went down to defeat after environmental and community groups mounted a strong opposition.

Dispute Over CSU Site

Cal State trustees will decide in May whether to start condemnation action to seize property owned by Michael Mohseni of Mohseni Ranches for a university campus. Eminent domain procedures will delay the opening of the campus by at least a year, state officials say.