Wilson Looks at Economics of School on Hospital Site

Although he has a “great interest” in converting Camarillo State Hospital into a Cal State University campus, Gov. Pete Wilson says he is withholding final judgment until he makes sure it is financially viable.

A governor’s task force embraced the idea last month, but Wilson has yet to review the panel’s 34-page recommendation.

Instead, Wilson’s staff members and Cal State officials have been crunching the numbers to determine if opening a Cal State campus on the sprawling hospital grounds makes economic sense.

“I have a great interest in it, but I am not going to prejudge the outcome,” Wilson said in an interview with The Times.

Although guarded in his answer, Wilson’s words brought some encouragement to Cal State officials who want to launch the proposed Cal State Channel Islands campus before the end of the decade. Ventura County is the most populous county in the state without a four-year university.

“That sounds very positive,” said Cal State trustee Jim Considine, chairman of a committee exploring the university system’s real estate ventures. “Hopefully, things will move smoothly through the governor’s office.”

Even though Wilson has yet to commit to the idea, his hand-picked task force of state and local leaders settled on a university campus as the best possible use of the 60-year-old mental hospital.

Wilson wants the mental institution closed by July 1 because of dwindling numbers of patients and spiraling costs, an idea that has drawn considerable criticism from mental-health advocates.

A team of Cal State officials has begun a several-month study to pin down the precise cost of opening the system’s 23rd campus using the hospital’s 85 buildings, scattered across more than 600 rolling acres south of Camarillo.

University officials have not released any figures yet, but the governor’s task force placed construction costs at $25 million to $50 million to convert the hospital complex into a four-year university and $20 million a year to keep it operating.

Given budget cuts in recent years and competing demands from 22 other campuses, university officials said they could afford only a fraction of that amount. So, they hope to get help from Sacramento and Ventura County.

“In order to make the package work, everyone is going to have to make it to the table,” Cal State University Chancellor Barry Munitz said.

“It won’t work if the governor is the only one behind it,” Munitz said. “The city and the county and private industry are going to have to come in and make tangible commitments to put the package together.”

The proposed Cal State Channel Islands, with a projected enrollment of 3,250 students in 2005, would not have an immediate need to occupy the massive hospital complex.

So Munitz has asked Handel Evans, president of the developing campus, to round up local business and governmental partners interested in sharing space and helping shoulder the financial load.

University officials and consultants have put out a call for businesses that would like to relocate to the hospital complex and pay rent. They hope to line up education-related businesses or high-tech industries that have some logical connection to a university.

The call has sparked some immediate interest. For instance, the Thousand Oaks Environmental Business Cluster, a consortium of environmental businesses, has suggested it could move to the campus.

Evans has talked to county schools Supt. Charles Weis about setting up a laboratory grammar school and high school for special-education students at the university campus. And he has been talking with Ventura County’s community colleges about various joint ventures.

Evans has also approached innovative, high-tech businesses, such as Amgen and GTE, about providing specialized worker-training or continuing education classes--for a fee. There is also a pitch for charitable donations.

“We are encouraged by the response so far from the community,” Evans said. “My administration has made it very clear to me: Those partnerships and relationships with the community are of paramount importance.”

Chancellor Munitz said he and his staff members expect to have a better sense of the project’s fate within three or four months.

If all goes as planned, they are counting on the governor to place extra money in his revised budget in May so they can immediately set to work and open the campus for the fall semester in 1998.

Munitz is optimistic that all the components will fall into place.

“Our assignment,” he said, “is not [determining] whether it will work, but how do we make it work.”