Burbank Firm to Become 1st Tenant at New CSU

CALSTART, a Burbank-based transportation technology consortium, will become the first tenant at Ventura County’s fledgling Cal State University campus.

Under a 10-year lease expected to be signed today, CALSTART 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.

Cal State officials said Thursday they hoped CALSTART would be the first of many tenants to take up residence at the university, to be called Cal State Channel Islands.

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 of 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.

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.