Land Deal Clears Way for Cal State Campus : Education: Citrus grower agrees to sell 200 acres for site near Camarillo, lifting a 30-year barrier to a Ventura County university.

A Camarillo lemon grower on Monday said he has agreed to sell 200 acres to the Cal State University system, clearing the hurdle that has blocked Ventura County from building its own public university for years.

Cal State officials have scheduled a news conference this morning to announce details of the agreement, moments after they inform the Ventura County Board of Supervisors of the breakthrough.

If the sale goes through as planned, it would be the first time Cal State officials have been able to acquire land for a Ventura County campus in more than 25 years.

In the past eight years, university officials have tried to buy parcels in two other locations in Ventura for a campus. But local opposition forced them to back away from those deals, leaving Ventura County the state’s most populous county without its own public four-year college.

“This is the break we’ve been looking for,” said Peter MacDougall, chairman of an advisory committee of volunteers pushing for a local state university.

Michael Mohseni, whose family owns 200 acres west of Camarillo, said he was pleased with the transaction, despite a condemnation suit filed against him by Cal State officials to acquire the land.

“I’m happy to be contributing in a small way to Ventura County being able to get a four-year university after 10 or 12 years of effort by the state college,” Mohseni said.

“I would have preferred they had not acquired our property,” he said. “But I was not ready to have them give up on the idea of having a state university in Ventura County because of us.”

The deal calls for the state to acquire 200 acres owned by the Mohseni Ranch off Central Avenue, and a neighboring 60-acre parcel owned by Sakioka Farms, Mohseni said. Specific terms of the deal will not be disclosed until this morning.

Mohseni said the deal almost fell through in recent weeks.

“It was very apparent to me that the university was ready to walk away from the whole project,” Mohseni said. “They didn’t have sufficient funds and they appeared frustrated and about ready to give up.”

David Leveille, the Cal State director of institutional relations who handled much of the negotiations for the state university system, could not be reached Monday. His spokeswoman declined to comment on the agreement.

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But Joyce M. Kennedy, the longtime director of the Ventura satellite campus of Cal State Northridge, said she is looking forward to this morning’s announcement.

“I heard there was positive news, but I haven’t heard the details,” she said. “But it sounds very promising. It’s a wonderful Christmas present to look forward to.”

Kennedy has been working for years to expand the Cal State Northridge Ventura campus to a full four-year university. She formed a community task force to further the efforts of building a local university, and has spearheaded fund-raising events to pay for books and other supplies.

The Legislature has set aside more than $5 million to acquire property for a Cal State campus in Ventura County, Kennedy said.

But MacDougall, the Santa Barbara City College president who chairs the advisory committee, said lawmakers in Sacramento need to follow up the land acquisition with money to build the campus.

“These are difficult times,” MacDougall said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to persuade those who need to be persuaded that this is an investment in the people of Ventura County and southern Santa Barbara County.”

George Sakioka, whose family owns 60 acres of vegetable crops neighboring Mohseni’s lemon groves, said Monday that he looks forward to having a public university in Ventura County.

“We’re glad this is finally happening,” he said. “We think this is a very positive thing for the county of Ventura. We’ve just been waiting for the other side to settle.”

A local state university has been planned by Cal State officials for nearly 30 years, when then-Gov. Pat Brown signed a bill authorizing $20,000 to study potential sites for the campus.

But a series of setbacks has delayed those plans. The state bought 425 acres in Somis in 1969 to build a university, but sold the land seven years later.

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In 1986, Cal State officials targeted several hundred acres in Ventura, just west of the Ventura Freeway. But opposition from nearby residents of the Ventura Keys neighborhood thwarted that project and university officials abandoned the site months later.

Cal State planners then looked north to Taylor Ranch, a sweeping hillside parcel near the intersection of the Ventura Freeway and California 33. Once again, opposition from local residents and the Ventura City Council prompted Cal State officials to back away from the controversy in 1990.

It was the following year that Cal State officials earmarked the 260 acres of lemon trees and vegetable crops in the greenbelt between Oxnard and Camarillo for the long-planned campus.

But Mohseni Ranch, which owns roughly four-fifths of the site, refused to sell for three years, forcing the state to file a condemnation proceeding to acquire the land.