CSU Officials Seek to Offset Cost of Converting Camarillo

Cal State University officials want to cobble together tax breaks and other incentives to lure high-tech, research and communications firms into leasing part of the sprawling Camarillo State Hospital grounds.

Cal State Channel Islands President Handel Evans asked Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday to join in creating a new government agency with the legal authority to cut the cost of converting the shuttered Camarillo State Hospital into the county’s first four-year public university.

Although there has been no shortage of public support for the university, financial aid from the state is a different matter. Officials, in turn, are scrambling to pave the way for business ventures to help subsidize the cost of the new university.

University officials propose leasing unoccupied buildings on the hospital’s 700-acre grounds to private companies to generate about $400,000 a year in income.

Cal State officials said they could then use that money to leverage between $35 million and $40 million over three separate bond issues in 1999, 2001 and 2004--money that could then be used to convert the aging buildings into classrooms, cafeterias and computer labs.

The bonds would be issued by an investment firm and would not require voter approval.

A few Cal State trustees have been tentative on the proposal to convert the closed psychiatric hospital into the system’s 23rd campus, saying that if the state wants a university, it should cough up the millions needed to fund it.

Officials say it will cost $11.8 million in fiscal year 1998-99 to take over the hilly Camarillo State Hospital site and relocate the existing classes and students from Cal State Northridge’s off-campus center in Ventura.