CSU Officials Plan to Lease Campus Housing to Military Personnel

With four squadrons of radar planes set to transfer to Point Mugu Navy base and housing in short supply, Cal State University officials are offering to make room at their Ventura County campus for the incoming military personnel.

CSU is working on a plan to lease a number of new residential units proposed for the campus to the Navy to house some of the nearly 1,000 employees expected to accompany 16 E-2C Hawkeye planes scheduled to arrive in coming months.

CSU officials also are considering renting up to 300 dormitory units planned on the campus to Navy reservists in need of short-term housing.

Point Mugu officials say the preliminary plans have caught the attention of high-ranking Navy officials in Washington, D.C.

“There is interest, but we’re in the exploratory mode,” said Capt. Stephen D. Beal, commanding officer of the Naval Air Weapons Station at Point Mugu. “The idea is intriguing. Now we need to get into the details.”

For Cal State officials, the offer is in keeping with their mandate to find ways to help the budding campus pay its own way.

Lawmakers have earmarked $16.5 million to convert the now-shuttered 630-acre Camarillo State Hospital into the new home of the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge.

But the CSU governing board has made it clear that the only way the Northridge center will expand into a full-fledged university, to be called Cal State Channel Islands, is if planners generate the $25 million to $50 million needed to make that happen.

With that in mind, they have been hammering out plans to create a commercial hub and establish a range of other money-making ventures to pump out a steady stream of cash to support university projects.

Among those ventures is a proposal to build about 450 dormitory units on the south end of the campus, with the first units available in about two years. As many as 300 of those units could be rented to Navy reservists until enough students want to live on campus to fill those dormitories.

In addition, CSU officials propose building 900 residential units--perhaps a mix of apartments, condominiums and townhouses--on the eastern edge of the campus for faculty, staff and married students.

Under CSU’s proposal, an unspecified number of those units could be leased to the Navy to house employees and their families expected at the base when the radar planes arrive from San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Station.

The first of four Hawkeye squadrons is scheduled to arrive at Point Mugu this summer. Classes will be transferred to the Camarillo site beginning as early as January.

Existing housing once used by hospital employees will be demolished to make way for some of the new residential units. One wing of the former hospital complex will be transformed into the student dormitories. Other parts of the hospital are being turned into classrooms and other campus facilities.

For university boosters, the new housing projects would serve two purposes.

Rent generated by the housing would help repay the debt on bonds that will be sold to expand the campus. And the deal would help solidify the university system’s evolving partnership with the Navy.

“This is about building the university and having sufficient funds needed to do that,” said Noel Grogan, project manager for the local campus. “But we also want to be very active in providing educational services to the people at the base and to their dependents.”

It likely will take at least a year for an agreement to be reached between the Navy and CSU, Grogan said. And if that happens, the first units probably won’t be available until the spring of 2000.

In the short term, Beal said, he believes there will be enough housing on the base and in the community over the next nine months for the new personnel. But he said there will come a time when the housing shortage becomes critical for Navy personnel.

“I certainly will have the need for some homes or dormitories,” Beal said. “Maybe we can find a good marriage in that regard.”