CSU Project Must Make Fiscal Sense, Trustee Says

Responding to criticism from some Ventura County leaders, a California State University trustee said Thursday that the plan to transform Camarillo State Hospital into a four-year university will not move forward unless it makes economic sense--even if that means educators must temporarily change hats and become developers.

“If the people in Ventura County think that we’re going to come in and take over the university and not offset maintenance expenditures somehow, then they’re out of their minds,” said William Campbell, a Cal State trustee who serves on the board’s campus development committee.

“We just don’t wake up one morning and say we want to be developers, but we do have to offset expenditures.”

Campbell, a skeptic of the ambitious plan, said the Cal State University Channel Islands campus would be running a deficit of more than $18 million a year by 2005, even with an expected $10 million in state subsidies and $6 million in revenue from the property.

Cal State officials cannot put all their time into dealing with an $18-million-a-year deficit with 22 other campuses to run, Campbell said.

The proposal--which calls for building a retirement community and leasing space to businesses on the sprawling hospital grounds--received 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.

Flynn questioned whether President Handel Evans was a developer or a university president and criticized the plan as being a way to use land for development purposes. Wright claimed Cal State officials were grasping at anything in order to build a university on the site.

Unveiling a preliminary blueprint for the campus conversion, planners acknowledged earlier this week that the plan included some potentially controversial elements.

Money generated from the revenue-producing ventures would total about $6.2 million annually by 2005. This amount would then 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 would not require voter approval.

“There’s a realization [among the trustees] that we can’t use the whole piece of property and need to do something else with the other parts of it,” said Colleen Bentley Adler, Cal State University’s chief spokeswoman.

And this apparently is not the first time Cal State officials have mixed campus conversion with land development.

“We’re in the middle of a project in Stockton where we’re converting a closed-down hospital to an off-campus center and we’ve been able to lease parts to businesses,” Adler said, adding that Stockton is now serving as a model for endeavors in Camarillo.

“But the board is certainly concerned about the state’s role in funding this project and there is concern about the level of support in Ventura, which we know is high, but there are still concerns,” she said. “Everyone is still walking around on tiptoes here a little bit. We have work to do and so does the state, county and cities.”

The city that would be most affected by the university, however, isn’t saying much about the proposal.

Although they met with Cal State officials last week and received the same presentation as county officials, Camarillo Mayor Stan Daily and City Manager Bill Little are declining to comment on the matter until they have seen a detailed written report.

Little did acknowledge that a retirement community, in addition to university students, would affect roads and traffic, but stated that most of the roads are under the county’s jurisdiction rather than Camarillo’s.

Councilwoman Charlotte Craven said she supports the university and has been working hard for it.

“As far as I understood it, the first preference for the retirement community would be to have a care facility in various stages so social science students could take advantage of it,” Craven said.

“It would be a popular thing to say that I don’t want them to do any of these things, but until we get the development plan it’s hard to comment. Other than the fact that these are ways they could be making money, they don’t have definite plans.”

Camarillo, however, needs to be involved in planning the land use of the 500 acres surrounding the campus, said Ned Chatfield, a candidate for the council in June’s special election.

“If it isn’t planned right, we’ll have another Isla Vista,” Chatfield said, referring to the housing development surrounding UC-Santa Barbara that was notorious for riots in the 1960s.

“The city needs to work closely with the county to very carefully plan development or it could be a disaster,” Chatfield said. “A senior citizen community sounds reasonable, probably not too many riots with a senior housing complex, but I’d have to see the plan to comment specifically. All I know now is that if the city and the county are not careful with the 500 acres of land use around the campus, it could be terrible.”

If the university can establish its campus and meet the needs of the community, civic leader Randy Churchill sees no reason why the university should not lease portions of the property to generate an income--even if it means building a retirement community.

“I assume our society is getting older and taking into consideration all the elder houses we already have around here, I don’t see any negatives as long as the university works within the growth plans of the city and county,” said Churchill, who organized a rally in support of the campus last month.

He added that Lewis Road will need improvement whether or not a retirement community is built. “As we go forth, there will be lots of challenges for the community and the county,” he said. “We just need to address them as we go and do the best we can. We need to compromise, at least get a consensus, and move forward. I feel the university will benefit the county, not only its students, but its economy as well.”