Camarillo Gets Ready for College

With the opening of Ventura County’s first public university just a year away, nearby Camarillo is poised to become a college town while struggling to retain its upscale residential character.

Highways will be widened, ramps will be installed, and parking lots will be expanded. Business people are juggling plans for appealing to the 15,000 students who are expected to attend Cal State University Channel Islands in the next 10 or 20 years.

Economic forecasters predict the college eventually may become the largest employer and biggest spender in the county. One analyst said the average student spends $7,000 to $8,000 a year on food and housing.

“Universities provide a lot more benefits than costs,” said Mark Schniepp, director of the California Economic Forecast Project in Santa Barbara. “They pay relatively high salaries to faculty and staff, they buy tons of goods and services directly from local vendors, and they have ongoing renovations and construction. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars expended by the university on an annual basis.”

But major hurdles such as snarled traffic and scarce housing await Camarillo on the eve of its transformation.

City officials say they want a vibrant place for student life, but not another Isla Vista--the occasionally rowdy neighborhood of bars and restaurants near UC Santa Barbara. They have studied the experiences of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo in dealing with university-related problems. They also have conferred with officials in San Marcos, a San Diego County city that in 1994 became home to Cal State San Marcos.

That university now has 6,200 students and is expected to grow to 30,000 by 2025.

“We have seen the community having more cultural opportunities,” San Marcos City Manager Rick Gittings said. “In a town of 59,000, you can have day care, kindergarten through grade 12, and the ability to get a graduate degree without having to leave town.”

Gittings said traffic has not been an issue, even though all the students are commuters. No neighborhood resembling Isla Vista has sprung up and the college’s economic effect on northern San Diego County has soared to about $90 million a year. That figure represents what the college spends on its payroll and the purchase of goods and services, he said.

“I don’t think there has been anything negative,” Gittings said. “We looked forward to it and history tells us our decision was right.”

In Camarillo, the city hopes the spruced-up Old Town neighborhood along Ventura Boulevard--with its widened sidewalks, sculptures and landscaping--will become a major draw for students.

Camarillo is encouraging merchants there to put apartments for students above their businesses. Business owners along Old Town’s eclectic corridor of bookshops, restaurants and bars dream of free-spending students wandering through their shops.

“If they drink, this will be the first place they come to,” said Jim McCaully, owner of the Buckhorn tavern near the Metrolink station. “I’ll try and attract as many as I can, maybe even hang a few college pennants on the wall.”

Even businesses that don’t cater directly to students are optimistic.

“Not many students will be window shopping for a toilet,” said Kevin Nunn, owner of Camarillo Plumbing and Paint.

But as he surveyed the room where he sells wallpaper, inspiration struck: “I might turn this into a coffee shop,” Nunn said.

For most residents, though, the first taste of university life will be traffic.

“That’s my biggest worry,” Camarillo Mayor Mike Morgan said. “That’s what I am keeping the closest eye on.”

To stem potential traffic problems, the city and state are undertaking a series of measures that add up to one of the largest and most expensive transportation projects in county history. The Ventura County Transportation Commission is organizing a $24-million effort to widen Lewis Road, the major highway to the college, from two to four lanes beginning in 2003. Bike lanes will be added and the entire project should be done within two to five years, according to commission officials.

The university estimates there will be 20,000 trips a day among the college, Lewis Road and the 101 Freeway, said Tom Fox, Camarillo’s deputy director of public works.

There is also a $35-million project to build a southbound ramp on the 101 Freeway connecting to Ventura Boulevard and a northbound ramp to Daily Drive. That project should begin in January and should be completed in four years, Fox said. At that point, the parking lot at the Metrolink station is to be expanded from about 225 spaces to 500. Shuttle buses will make regular trips to the campus.

Meanwhile, the columns under the Ventura Freeway at the Metrolink station will be filled in to create solid walls decorated with murals. A second platform will be opened at the station and more trains are expected to service the area, Fox said.

“The studies that have been done are clear that we are going to see a huge influx of traffic at the site,” said Chris Stevens, deputy director of the county transportation commission. “Our hope is to get these things in place, and when this influx of traffic occurs, we won’t have gridlock.”

While traffic problems can be eased, housing is harder to tackle. Housing in Camarillo, as in most parts of the county, is scarce and often unaffordable. An average two-bedroom home in Camarillo rents for about $1,800 a month. The median home price in Ventura County is $293,400, according to the California Assn. of Realtors.

But city officials and educators believe the university will be mostly a commuter campus serving county students.

Jerry Bankston, Camarillo’s city manager, said no major off-campus apartment complexes or wholesale zoning changes are being considered for students. With a population of 60,000, Camarillo is close to being built-out, he said.

Bankston hopes reliable shuttles and highway improvements will make new housing less urgent. Still, he worries that hard-pressed students will crowd into houses and apartments.

“We have strict code enforcement,” he said. “We are not going to have the experience of San Luis Obispo, with people parking on the lawns, and furniture outside homes. This is a residential community and will remain that way.”

The 673-acre university, in a rural area three miles from Camarillo’s downtown, is planning to build 2,000 dorm rooms for students and 900 housing units for faculty and staff by 2006.

“The demand will determine how quickly we can provide facilities for the students,” said Richard Rush, president of the university. “I am quite certain there will be 15,000 students in the next 10 or 20 years.”

Schniepp, the economist, said it is unlikely that large student neighborhoods will develop near the college.

“Cal States are usually not destination universities for out-of-state students,” he said. “They are more commuter colleges, so we won’t get the kind of student villages that grow up at Isla Vista or Cal Poly.”

James Walker, president of Moorpark College, said Camarillo will probably not become a traditional college town, but a town with a university on its outskirts.

“It is much more isolated than typical state universities,” he said. “It will be up to Camarillo to decide how involved it wants to be with the new university.”

The city seems to have made up its mind about that.

“I’m very much looking forward to it,” Camarillo City Councilwoman Charlotte Craven said. “We are still the most populous county in the state without a four-year university. We have one of the lowest rates of high school graduates who go on to college. This opportunity outweighs any problems.”