CSUN Revives Push to Develop North Campus

Three years after the collapse of one much-vaunted development deal, officials at cash-starved Cal State Northridge are renewing efforts to find developers interested in CSUN’s little-used North Campus area.

Campus officials said Friday they have hired a consultant to prepare a marketing strategy and an open solicitation to builders for the 45-acre area that includes the former Devonshire Downs racetrack. The solicitation could be issued before the end of the year, campus officials said.

“We’re obviously anxious to move this ahead as quickly as possible,” said Elliot Mininberg, a CSUN faculty member and former vice president. CSUN officials hope any development deal would provide hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in income.

The solicitation is the first development activity on the site since 1992, when Santa Monica-based Watt Investment Properties Inc., amid a souring economy, withdrew from a landmark $200-million mixed-use project.

North Campus development plans were then put on the back burner. But now, with the region’s economy out of recession and the campus’s recovery from the Northridge earthquake well under way, university officials again are looking to develop the property.

At the April 27 meeting of CSUN’s North Campus University Park Development Corp., the nonprofit group formed to oversee the Watt project, agreed to hire Glendale-based Leidenfrost/Horowitz and Associates as its consultant. Their bill will not exceed $150,000, Mininberg said.

CSUN will consider commercial, retail and housing projects, or any combination of the three, said Mininberg, the group’s chief financial officer. One approach could be long-term lease agreements. And CSUN officials said they would prefer projects that would not conflict with the educational environment.

Another reason for pushing forward now, two sources told The Times, is that a private group has expressed interest in building a volleyball complex on part of the site. And before making any decision that project, campus officials want to ensure that it would not interfere with any broader use of the land.

The North Campus site is bounded by Devonshire Street to the north, Lassen Street to the south, Zelzah Avenue to the east and Lindley Avenue to the west. In concept, campus officials have talked of commercial uses to the north, office buildings midway, and faculty housing to the south near the main campus.

As for existing development, the long-closed University Tower Apartments, heavily damaged in the January, 1994, earthquake, are scheduled for demolition. And both the University Village Apartments and the campus’s old stadium could be leveled and rebuilt elsewhere, Mininberg said.

The only part of Watt’s University Park project ever built was 15 student dorm buildings south of Lassen Street that cost more than $60 million. And although the entire project was to have been a financial windfall for the campus, the dorms alone instead became a huge financial drain because there has been a large vacancy rate.

Additional impetus to develop the property now comes from the fact that the Cal State University system has said it will no longer cover those deficits.

The campus’s financial demands also could clash with desires that projects fit with the university’s character. “I think we need to be very picky about which proposals we consider,” said Marc Levine, the student representative on the North Campus board.

Seth Dudley, a veteran real estate broker with Julien J. Studely Inc. who specializes in the San Fernando Valley market, said he thinks CSUN “is going to get a lot of interest” once it offers its property. Dudley said there is an acute shortage of large blocks of office space in the region.

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CSUN Plan

Officials at Cal State Northridge, after a three- year hiatus, have restarted efforts to find developers interested in building commercial, retail and housing projects on CSUN’s underutilized 45- acre North Campus area.