University Officials Temper Hopes for Using Hospital Site

Converting mental-health wards at Camarillo State Hospital into college classrooms seems like the kind of shortcut a public official would love.

Not only could Cal State administrators open a university at least three years ahead of schedule, but taking over the hospital would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars needed to build a new university from scratch. What’s more, the buildings Cal State would inherit are as attractive as those at any college, and possibly in better shape.

But university officials are not gung-ho just yet.

Instead, after three decades of pursuing a campus in Ventura County, they have found themselves in a familiar place: on hold.

“It’s no secret that we would be interested in Camarillo State Hospital if it becomes available,” said J. Handel Evans, acting president of the yet-to-materialize Ventura County campus. “It is a waiting game to see what happens in the political arena.”

In deference to the mental-health advocates and their legislative champion, Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), Cal State officials are trying to squelch their public enthusiasm for the ready-made campus.

They want to make sure the Legislature agrees with Gov. Pete Wilson’s plan to close the hospital and make its 85 buildings and 750 acres available to other state agencies.

And they want to avoid the political skirmish unless formally invited to submit a proposal to a governor’s task force set up to determine the best use for the hospital if it closes.

Still, college officials are doing some homework. The chairman of Cal State’s Board of Trustees recently joined other university officials on a tour of the sprawling hospital complex.

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Chairman Jim Considine, who oversees the 22-campus system, said he was impressed by the California Mission-style buildings, the central quad, the courtyards, the bell tower and other architectural features.

“It is very much like a college campus in its present state,” Considine said. “There are obvious adjustments that would have to be made, and that costs money. But those are all problems that could be solved if the community gets behind it and the facilities become available.”

Despite bad-mouthing by some mental-health officials in Sacramento, university planners have found the hospital buildings in good shape.

They have found no evidence to support the claims of mental-health advocates that it would cost more to renovate the hospital buildings than to build a new university.

“The people maintaining the facilities have done a remarkably good job,” Evans said. He noted that hospitals, which are subject to rigid licensing requirements, must meet much higher standards of maintenance than university buildings. “I’m impressed with the facilities.”

Indeed, state officials in charge of hospital maintenance take issue with suggestions that the hospital is in desperate need of repairs to upgrade outdated electrical wiring, to fortify buildings against earthquakes, to remove cancer-causing asbestos and to clean up toxic waste.

“As far as I’m concerned, it is one of the better facilities in our system,” said Douglas Yee, construction and maintenance supervisor for the state Department of Developmental Services in Sacramento. “We have a very good plant operations staff at Camarillo, one of the top.”

To be sure, the 60-year-old hospital needs work, officials said, and the department’s wish list would include $36 million in improvements through the end of the decade.

But work crews in recent years have renovated many of the buildings to meet strict fire and safety codes imposed on hospitals. They have replaced large sections of its electrical wiring and plumbing, as well as ducts that carry steam to heat the complex.

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Repairs continue this year, replacing a leaky roof on one large building, repaving streets and replacing sewer lines and a backup boiler for the steam-heating system.

In the late 1980s, contractors removed all the asbestos that posed an immediate threat to human health, Yee said. The rest poses little or no health hazard, he said, and will be removed or properly sealed during future renovations.

Abating all remaining asbestos would cost about $6.8 million, according to last year’s estimate.

“It’s a cheap problem to fix,” Yee said. “But we wouldn’t go in and fix it because there is no risk.”

Yee said his department had a statewide toxic cleanup over the last couple of years that included Camarillo State Hospital. Last year, crews removed contaminated soil from a leaking underground gas tank, records show.

“We’ve investigated all leads and anything we’ve found, we’ve cleaned it up,” Yee said. “To my knowledge, there are no skeletons in the closet.”

Two years ago, the state Department of General Services tagged one massive hospital building as one of the most seismically hazardous buildings owned by the state of California.

Officials initially recommended that $13.3 million in bond money be used to retrofit the 218,000-square-foot building completed in 1949. No work has been done.

Upon the urging of the Legislature, state architects decided to refigure their rankings and shift the money this year to buildings elsewhere that pose a greater risk of harming life or property during an earthquake, said Susan Shahidi, an architect with the Department of Developmental Services.

Some maintenance officials have questioned the initial methodology that placed the Camarillo building so high in the state rankings.

In a complex formula to assess the risk to human life, state officials did not actually tally the number of workers or patients that now use the building. Instead, they counted a building’s allowable occupancy under safety codes. That put the building’s population at 2,725--more than work or live in all the buildings at the hospital.

And the study assessed the risk at seven times that of an office building, because people occupy hospitals 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“That is the only reason this building came up so high in the report,” Shahidi said.

The main buildings at Camarillo State Hospital were built like bunkers. In fact, they were designated fallout shelters during the Cold War.

Designed and built by the Works Progress Administration during the 1930s and 1940s, their walls and ceilings are 10-inch, and sometimes 12-inch, reinforced concrete. The Spanish-tile roofs were added on top for cosmetic reasons rather than to keep out the rain.

The initial plan, designed by a team of WPA architects, is eclectic architecture based principally upon the California Mission style with Spanish and Romanesque motifs.

It has amenities that would fit as naturally on a university campus as they would on a self-sufficient hospital complex: a bell tower, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, ball fields, a gymnasium, three chapels, a central dining hall with 30-foot ceilings, nine kitchens and a fire station.

All the central buildings have extra-wide halls, floor-to-ceiling windows, arched door frames and the sweeping wheelchair ramps that are now required by federal law. University officials see relatively easy conversion to classrooms, faculty offices and laboratories.

“You couldn’t afford to build these buildings today,” said George Dutra, Cal State University’s chief of policy and planning. “They are solid concrete with raised floors. All of the buildings are handicap accessible. It’s pretty impressive.”

Joanne Kozberg, secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency, was also dazzled by the hospital’s charm during a recent tour, said her deputy, Kevin C. Eckery.

“It is a terrific place,” Eckery said. “She thought it was particularly beautiful and well-maintained.”

Gov. Wilson named Kozberg to lead the task force--along with Sen. Wright and Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard)--and determine the best use of the hospital if it is shuttered.

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Eckery said the question remains wide open. “Is it appropriate for an elder-care facility? Is it appropriate for a university? Is it appropriate for a youth authority? We don’t know yet. We need to beat the bushes and see.”

For the moment, task force leaders are gathering names to widen the group’s membership. They plan to add local public officials, business leaders, mental-health advocates and others interested in the fate of the hospital.

The task force has also asked the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Land Institute to assemble a panel of experts to make professional recommendations.

The prestigious think tank often gives advice to public officials wrestling with thorny problems. Recently, one of its panels offered suggestions on how to revitalize riot-torn neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Wright said she is not done fighting to save the mental hospital, along with its 1,500 jobs and $80-million payroll.

As part of a special budget committee selected from Assembly members and state senators, she hopes to manipulate the budget so that the hospital’s June 1997 closure is postponed by one year.

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Then she wants the governor’s task force to first review whether the hospital should be closed--a departure from the governor’s instructions to focus on what the facility should do next.

“We are jumping too fast,” said Wright, a longtime champion of mental-health programs. “We could close the hospital and say the university could have it and then they could run into financial trouble and we wouldn’t have either.

“I want the task force to look if we can keep the hospital,” she said.

All this uncertainty has forced Cal State officials to proceed cautiously and wait for a final determination of the hospital’s fate.

In the interim, university officials are moving forward with preliminary plans to build a new university on 260 acres of farmland they purchased near Camarillo.

“The frustration with all of this is not really knowing what will happen,” said Evans, the Ventura campus’ acting president. “So we have to go with what we’ve got.”