CSU Campus Set to Sign 10-Year Contract With First Tenant

A day after losing a potential long-term tenant, Cal State University officials hammered out a lease with the CALSTART consortium, a group of transportation technology companies that together will become the first to set up shop at Ventura County’s fledgling CSU campus.

Under a 10-year lease expected to be signed today, the Burbank-based consortium will move part of its operation into a 26,000-square-foot building on the west end of the campus planned for the shuttered Camarillo State Hospital complex.

CALSTART officials said they hope to move in by the end of the month and that their presence will help spur other companies to shift operations to the budding campus.

“We are excited, we are genuinely energized by this, and we believe it will be a great partnership with the university,” said Mike Gage, CALSTART’s president and chief executive.

“We certainly see the opportunity to contribute to what the university is trying to do,” Gage said of the CSU system’s efforts to attract business partners to help its 23rd university pay its own way. “We don’t mislead ourselves into thinking that it will change overnight. But somebody has to be first, and actually we’re delighted to be.”

The deal comes on the heels of a decision by the owner of a Camarillo software company to pull out of negotiations to become the university’s first long-term tenant.

Michael Edell, president of jeTECH Data Systems, announced earlier this week that he had been unable to reach agreement on a lease and had given up on the idea of shifting part of his operation to the developing campus.

Cal State officials said Thursday they were delighted to bounce back so quickly, and hoped CALSTART would be the first of many tenants to take up residence at the university, to be called Cal State Channel Islands.

“It’s always good to have one under your belt,” said Handel Evans, university president. “I never really doubted we could do it. It just takes time.”

The timing couldn’t be better for campus officials.

They are scheduled to go before the CSU governing board next month to ask system trustees to formally accept the property. At the same time, they are seeking approval on an environmental impact report aimed at guiding the transformation of the Camarillo property.

With traffic being one of the key issues in that report, CALSTART has pledged to help the university deal with a range of anticipated transportation problems.

CALSTART, a nonprofit consortium of more than 200 companies dedicated to advanced transportation technology, has proposed using electric vehicles, shuttle buses and a bicycle lending program to ease congestion and help students get to and from campus.

By employing such innovations, CALSTART officials said they believe the new campus can become a nationwide showcase for advanced transportation programs while solving its own traffic woes.

At the same time, CALSTART officials will be starting their third enterprise, joining offices in Burbank and Alameda to help companies develop cutting-edge transportation technology.

“We’re excited to be working with what really appears to be some dynamic and innovative folks out there,” Gage said. “We hope that we can bring an equal amount of innovation and dynamism to our side of the equation.”

Cal State officials say they believe the company will bring those things and more.

Although lawmakers have earmarked $16.5 million to convert the old mental hospital into the new home for the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge, the CSU governing board has made it clear that the only way the center will grow into an autonomous university is if it generates the money to make that happen.

Not only must planners transform the aging hospital into a modern college campus, they must find ways to generate the $25 million to $50 million that will be needed to expand the site.

Toward that end, they have launched an aggressive leasing program and are pushing a range of other money-generating ventures to help turn the 630-acre site into a four-year campus.

Long worried about the public’s perception of the campus and whether it would ever become a reality, Cal State officials said it feels good to have a deal worked out with the first tenant. And it is hoped this agreement touches off a stampede of others interested in leasing space at the site.

“Considering we don’t yet have a facility, we still have a way to go,” Evans said. “But I think this reflects well on the status of the CSU [campus] and shows that people want to join in partnership with what we’re trying to do.”