Cal State Revenue Plan Splits Officials

Ventura County’s political leaders split Wednesday over a warning that Camarillo State Hospital can’t be turned into a four-year university unless the campus is surrounded by a range of enterprises designed to financially support that effort.

A proposal to create income-generating ventures on the developing Cal State campus won varying degrees of support from County Supervisors Frank Schillo, Kathy Long, Judy Mikels and Susan Lacey, but brought condemnation from Supervisor John K. Flynn and state Sen. Cathie Wright.

Those ventures--which include development of a 1,200-unit retirement community and possible construction of a housing project to raise cash for the conversion--were unveiled Tuesday to Cal State trustees in Long Beach.

“Where they are at now is grasping at anything in order to build a university on that site,” said Wright, a Republican from Simi Valley. “But the people of Ventura County are going to have to pay for all of that, one way or another. And I don’t think they are prepared to pay that price.”

Other county leaders, however, said they viewed the campus blueprint as a working document, a good first step in the process of converting the aging psychiatric hospital into the county’s first public university.

“I applaud them for putting this out there and making people understand from the very beginning that these are some of the concepts that may help support the university,” Mikels said.

“I think we have to make a decision that the university is a vital addition to this county,” she added. “And we need a very upfront and practical approach to what it will take to make that happen.”

While Cal State officials hope to start showcasing the blueprint to city councils and community groups next week, county planners said the proposal has already raised some concerns.

Chief among those is who will pay to widen roadways and handle other improvements needed to bring the campus online.

For example, $12 million would be needed to widen a 3.2-mile stretch of Lewis Road from two lanes to four. County planners have applied for federal funds to pay for much of that project, but it still must beat out other roadway projects for that money.

“We think the university is a priority within the county and would do very well in competing for funds,” said Butch Britt, a county public works official.

Even if the county gets the federal funds, it would still have to pay $2.4 million in matching funds for the widening. Britt said he doesn’t know where that money would come from.

A related concern is the level of control that the county would have in the university project. This early in the process, planners don’t even know whether the county would be able to impose fees on parts of the development to help pay for improvements.

As a state agency, the Cal State university system is exempt from local zoning and permitting regulations, said Keith Turner, the county’s chief planner.

But that only holds true if the proposal is consistent with Cal State’s mission to establish and operate a university.

“If they get away from university-related activities and they get into private development in order to fund the university, then that starts calling into question local planning and zoning issues,” Turner said. “It boils down to how far they can go in terms of using their university status to achieve what they want.”

What Cal State officials want is a campus that will help pay its own way, a project that will be profitable and pump out the lion’s share of the $45 million it will take to transform the state hospital into a state-of-the-art university.

What they envision is not just a university but a mini-city for senior citizens--about half the size of Leisure Village in Camarillo--carved out of 80 acres on the northern tip of the 700-acre site.

The retirement community would consist of 1,000 apartments for independent living, as many as 200 units for assisted living and as many as 400 beds for skilled nursing care.

Lacey said she would support a retirement or elder-care community at the site because it would be directly linked to the university’s nursing or gerontology programs.

“I would really like to see them go with a senior housing community,” she said. “I think that’s far more exciting than any other alternatives.”

Existing houses in that area would be leveled to make room for the new development. However, if Cal State officials cannot attract enough uses for the elderly, they plan to sell or lease the remaining land to a developer who would build single-family homes.

Money generated by those and other ventures--an estimated $6.2 million a year by 2005--would be used to leverage three separate $10-million bond issues in 1999, 2001 and 2004. Those bonds would be issued by an investment firm and not require voter approval, Cal State officials said.

Mary Stephens, executive project manager for the site, said market studies have shown that elder care services would generate the kind of money needed to make the campus profitable. And she said the elderly population would provide a patient base for nursing students.

While some of the proposals for the campus may prove to be controversial, Stephens said it is the price that must be paid for developing a Cal State campus here and now.

“The way we are approaching this is that there is a certain income stream we need, and if we can achieve that some other way, we’re open to that,” she said. “At this point, we are introducing a lot we know we need to work with the community on. But I don’t see any of this as a problem right now; I see it as part of the process.”

But where Stephens sees the process unfolding, Flynn sees a project being foisted on Ventura County.

The supervisor said he is deeply disturbed by the level of development being proposed at the hospital site. He is unwilling to support the conversion effort as proposed.

“I’m beginning to wonder if Handel Evans is a developer or a university president,” Flynn said of the president of the local campus. “This strikes me as something that’s not really a university; it’s a way to use land for development purposes. I don’t really know what the mission is here. It seems confused.”

But Long, whose supervisorial district includes the proposed campus, said she sees the blueprint as the county’s first opportunity to discuss what it really wants on that property. She has no problem with the retirement community, but added that she can’t see supporting a single-family residential development there.

“I don’t think we go out there and build a little city just to keep the university open,” Long said. “But I think some interesting partnerships could be formed out there. I see this as a working document to help get us there.”

With the exception of Lacey and Flynn, the master plan was shown to county supervisors before its official unveiling Tuesday. Schillo said he is pleased with the work that has been done so far, and looks forward to continuing to work with Cal State officials as the process evolves.

“In terms of the plan, it could be dramatically changed 10 to 15 years from now,” Schillo said. “Some of these things will work, some of them won’t. There may be other sources of revenue for the operation of the university as we go along.

“This is a preliminary attempt to throw something on the board and see how people in the county respond.”