Budget Battle Pushes Back Timetable for a CSU Campus

With lawmakers at odds and the state budget in limbo, Cal State University officials all but concede they will be unable to meet a self-imposed January deadline for converting a shuttered psychiatric hospital near Camarillo into a college campus.

Due largely to a looming budget battle in Sacramento, CSU officials say they have been forced to push back to next summer their timetable for moving the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge to the old hospital complex.

Assuming there are no other roadblocks, the satellite campus would open at the former Camarillo State Hospital site in the fall of 1999, the first step toward establishing a four-year university on the property.

“It’s a slip in the timetable, but it’s not a slip in our overall effort to create a university on this site,” said Handel Evans, president of the fledgling Cal State Channel Islands campus.

“If we go through September without the governor having signed the budget, then we are going to have significant delays,” Evans added. “But as it stands, this is of no consequence to what we’re ultimately trying to accomplish.”

Still, there is always concern that any delay could sap momentum from a long-running campaign to bring a Cal State campus to Ventura County.

The birth of the university has been a protracted labor spanning more than three decades. There have been plenty of proposals along the way to build the local campus, each thwarted by community opposition.

But in recent years, local residents have expressed a rising tide of support for the new campus, demonstrated last fall when university boosters packed a meeting of the Cal State governing board to urge that the hospital be turned into the university system’s 23rd campus.

Ventura farmer and business leader Carolyn Leavens said that after a 30-year wait, adding a little more time to the countdown shouldn’t hurt that effort.

“We’re pushing as hard as we can and we’ve never gotten this far down the road,” she said. “I think everybody is absolutely convinced that it’s going to happen this time. When you talk about 30 years, nine more months is a drop in the bucket.”

Budget Limbo Affects Funding for Campus

The first day of July had held great promise for university boosters.

If lawmakers had been able to agree on the budget and the governor had signed it into law, it would have funneled $11.3 million to transform a portion of the shuttered hospital complex into a college campus and another $5.2 million to operate the facility the first year.

CSU planners had hoped to use that money to renovate four of the Spanish-style buildings at the complex, turning them into dozens of classrooms, laboratories and offices necessary to launch the inaugural phase of the campus in January.

But even if the money had come through, CSU officials now say they would have had a tough time meeting that deadline.

Aside from the renovation, an even bigger challenge would have been the transfer of CSUN’s off-campus center to Camarillo by the first of the year.

Under that plan, the satellite campus would have remained an extension of the Northridge university until it attracted enough students and money to become a full-fledged campus.

But CSUN officials say a move halfway through the school year, essentially over the winter holiday break, would have been tough to pull off.

They figure they will need at least five or six months of lead time to set the move in motion and write class schedules that reflect expanded offerings at the new site.

“I want to be out there as soon as we can, but we don’t want to do it in a way that divides our staff or compromises what our students are doing in the classroom,” said Steve Lefevre, hired late last year to head the satellite campus and guide its transition to Camarillo.

“It just works out that next summer is a more workable time for us,” he said. “It’s just a better time to pack the boxes.”

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of preparations underway. The Ventura center is expanding course offerings, with an emphasis on adding more daytime programs to draw a broader student base.

Officials also are trying to determine how to move the center, now shoe-horned into 30,000 square feet in a coffee-colored office building overlooking the Ventura Freeway, near Seaward Avenue.

There is still a possibility some programs could shift to the Camarillo campus early next year, Lefevre said.

But by waiting until next fall to make the large-scale move, he said, CSU planners will be able to give his 15,000 full- and part-time students a more complete campus when they arrive in Camarillo.

“I would hope that the community is assured that we are moving as quickly and deliberately as we can,” Lefevre said. “But we’ve also got to think about the students themselves. I want them to have a good experience once they get out there. It’s just like opening a restaurant: The word of mouth can kill you.”

Commercial Hub for Campus Envisioned

There was a time when CSU officials were concerned with the public’s perception of the campus and whether it would become a reality.

In fact, they worried about lingering skepticism over the project, especially among those who might be interested in leasing space at the developing university.

Not only must planners transform the aging hospital complex into a modern college campus, they must find ways to generate the $25 million to $50 million that will be needed to expand the Northridge center into a full-fledged university.

Toward that end, they have been hammering out plans to create a commercial hub and establish a range of other money-making ventures to help the college pay its way.

That effort has been picking up steam. In May, Camarillo-based computer software company jeTECH Data Systems announced it would lease a 30,000-square-foot building on the property.

And last week, the Burbank-based CALSTART consortium announced it was considering establishing a satellite facility at the campus.

CALSTART, a consortium of more than 200 companies dedicated to advanced transportation technology, is interested in moving a good portion of its operation to Camarillo to help the budding university deal with a range of transportation problems.

Officials for the nonprofit group said they envision Cal State Channel Islands becoming a nationwide model for advanced transportation programs.

“They have a unique opportunity . . . to become a beautiful showcase for the potential and reality of new transportation alternatives,” said CALSTART spokesman Bill Van Amburg, adding that an agreement could be signed within a month.

With everything that is going on, Channel Islands President Evans said there is no reason to believe a slight delay in launching the new campus will affect the ultimate goal.

In fact, state lawmakers last week pushed the campus a step closer to reality by endorsing a bill aimed at generating the cash needed to transform the state hospital into a college campus.

The Assembly’s higher education committee approved a bill to create a special authority aimed at fueling development at the Camarillo campus and pumping out a steady stream of cash to support university projects.

The bill, written by state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo), has one last hurdle to clear--the appropriations committee--before going to the full Assembly for a vote. The state Senate approved the legislation late last month.

And all this leads to September, when the Cal State governing board is scheduled to review an environmental study on the conversion project and vote to formally accept the property.

“I think we’ve moved light years from where we started,” Evans said. “We’re still a long way from creating a university. But we’re close to getting a campus now and that’s further than we have ever been in this process.”

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About This Series

The countdown to the creation of a Cal State campus in Ventura County has been pushed back to next summer because of a looming budget battle in Sacramento. CSU officials had hoped to open the new campus, at the former Camarillo State Hospital complex, by the first of the year. “Birth of a University: Countdown to a Cal State campus,” is an occasional series chronicling the development of the campus. This installment focuses on efforts to keep momentum going despite the delay caused by the lack of a state budget.