Conversion of Camarillo Faces Review

From the moment she drove onto the property, Carol Roland liked the look of Camarillo State Hospital.

The giant bell tower and the curve of the arches that grace the Spanish-style buildings anchoring the historic core delighted Roland, program coordinator for the state Office of Historic Preservation.

She was especially thrilled with the intimate details of design, lingering over a level of work still breathtaking more than 60 years after the hospital opened and nearly a year after it was shut down with an eye toward conversion to a Cal State campus.

“It really has tremendous potential, and I think it can be a real landmark,” said Roland, who as part of an ongoing environmental review of the conversion project is helping bridge the hospital’s historic past with its ambitious future.

As the push to deliver a four-year college to Ventura County shifts into high gear, Cal State planners have entered a crucial phase of the effort to convert the shuttered mental hospital into a 15,000-student university.

With less than 10 months until the new campus is set to open, planners have launched an environmental review designed to guide the hospital’s transformation and unearth any flaws that might be lurking in the proposal.

The first public meeting on the environmental study will be held today at the old hospital site.

In coming weeks, armies of consultants and others will scour the plans and visit the campus, delving into issues such as preserving historic buildings and ensuring that sensitive Native American sites are undisturbed.

There also will be a hard look at the level of pollution and traffic that the proposed campus will generate, as well as related development that could gobble up surrounding farmland.

Ultimately, the environmental review will serve to bolster the campus master plan, a development blueprint aimed at guiding creation of a range of money-making ventures being proposed at the site.

Those ventures are needed so that the campus--which will start out as the new home for the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge--can afford to expand into a full-fledged university, to be called Cal State Channel Islands.

The campus has plenty of public support, but Cal State planners caution that it is by no means a done deal.

Each step in the environmental review process is important, they say. And each has the potential to stop the project in its tracks.

“We’re in a position where the trustees will not accept a property that has a significant amount of environmental issues connected to it,” said Noel Grogan, project manager for the developing campus.

“Every time someone raises an objection that looks like it’s meaningful at all, we have really tried hard to address that issue and eliminate it up front,” he said. “There are always things that can turn up down the road, but we’re trying to be as responsive as possible.”

And with good reason. Ventura County has waited more than 30 years for its own university. In the past, environmental battles have helped sink proposals to establish a local Cal State campus.

Some environmentalists still worry that the county’s zeal to plant the flag for a Cal State campus may overshadow many of the small, yet important details of the environmental review process.

“Even among those of us who might have pretty serious concerns about this, you really have to ponder a second before you throw yourself out in front of this,” said Al Sanders, conservation chairman of the Los Padres Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Added Mike Stubblefield, an El Rio resident who reviews air quality issues for a local Sierra Club chapter: “The environmental community has been strangely quiet on this matter. This is going to be a compromise. On one hand. we’re going to get culture, job training and higher learning. But no one really seems to be looking at the dark underside of what we’re going to get.”

Chief among the concerns raised so far is how to expand and improve local roads to handle traffic to and from the college. There is also concern among some residents that university projects might prompt a corridor of construction--fast-food outlets and strip malls--stretching from the campus to the Camarillo city limits.

Several facilities already dot the cropland along rural Lewis Road, including the Los Posada halfway house for the mentally ill and the Casa Pacifica home for abused children. Ventura County also plans to develop a 16,000-seat amphitheater and golf course immediately north of the university site.

Environmentalists and others fear that growth will spin off itself as roads are widened and water lines expanded to meet the needs of development.

“We want the college; we just don’t want all the bad things that go with that,” said 80-year-old Camarillo resident Bill Torrence, president of the Ventura County League of Homeowners and a leader of the effort to adopt a countywide initiative to stop development on farmland.

“As far as I can see, the university itself won’t create any big problems,” he said. “But I’d like to see some good planning go into this. If they start using up agricultural land, we will fight them right down to the last dog.”

Well aware of such concerns, university planners say they are working to address those issues.

Although it is still unknown how much traffic will be generated by the university, planners say some money already has been earmarked for improvements in roads leading to the campus.

More than $20 million has been set aside by the county for a new interchange to be built at Lewis Road and the Ventura Freeway in 2001. Plus, $4 million has been allocated to begin a $12-million, road-widening project to the university.

To help ease traffic congestion, planners say they intend to build about 900 dormitory units, reducing the number of commuters. They also plan to improve bus service to the facility, perhaps operating a shuttle line.

Cal State officials say they are trying to attract as many commercial services as possible to tend to senior citizens expected to flock to a proposed elder care facility on the outskirts of the campus. Those services--which could include a restaurant and convenience store--also would serve faculty and staff expected to occupy 700 to 900 units of housing proposed for the campus.

As the planning process barrels forward, other environmental concerns will be addressed.

To help protect and preserve sensitive Native American resources on the 630-acre hospital property, Camarillo State Hospital employee Raudel Banuelos has been hired to help archeologists document those sites.

“I’m the type of person who wants to make sure everything is done in the right way,” said Banuelos, who has done similar work on Santa Cruz Island. “They support that, and I’m confident these areas will be protected.”

Farmland preservationist Peter Brand holds that same degree of confidence. A project manager with the California Coastal Conservancy and a leader in efforts to save the Calleguas Creek watershed from people and nature, Brand has found the university diligent in its planning efforts.

“We think they are going to be a really good neighbor down there,” Brand said. “They’re trying to look ahead to the future to all the facility’s needs.”