Long Beach House Chosen for Future Cal State Chiefs

Future California State University chancellors would live in a restored 1930s-era $1-million-plus house in the Belmont Heights area of Long Beach under a deal proposed Tuesday by university officials.

The 4,670-square-foot, five-bedroom house at 275 Granada Ave. would replace the controversial Bel-Air residence that the university system recently sold for $3.6 million after it became a symbol of extravagance.

The asking price for the Long Beach home is $1.45 million, but trustes hope to obtain it for $1.2 million.

The Mediterranean-style house is elegant and suitable for fund-raising events, but presents a more down-to-earth image than the gated Bel-Air estate, said Cal State trustees.

In addition, they emphasized that the Granada Avenue house, which is vacant, is close to the system’s headquarters on the Long Beach harbor.

“I think the image is important,” said James H. Gray, the trustee who headed the committee that recommended the purchase during a meeting Tuesday. “The house does the job and the setting, while lovely, is not pretentious.”

In square footage, the Long Beach house is about the same size as the one in Bel-Air. However, the Belmont Heights property, on the corner of Vista Street, is only about a quarter-acre in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, compared to the two-acre hillside compound on Stone Canyon Road in Bel-Air, one of the wealthiest and heavily guarded districts in the world.

Chancellor designate Barry Munitz, who is to take office Aug. 1, helped choose the Long Beach house. He said its location, on a public street that has many more modest homes, would symbolize the university’s openness to all kinds of students.

“Being in a real neighborhood is a key advantage,” said Munitz, a corporate executive from Texas who had been head of the University of Houston’s main campus.

His Cal State predecessor, W. Ann Reynolds, was forced to resign last year in a dispute with the Legislature over large pay raises for herself and other Cal State executives. Contributing to her downfall were reports about spending at the Bel-Air house, including $65,000 to repave its very long driveway and large parking area. Reynolds now is chancellor of the City University of New York.

The biggest drawback to the Long Beach house is that it has a three-car garage, hardly ample for the formal functions held at a chancellor’s residence. But Gray said that street parking is ample in the area.

Cal State officials stressed that taxpayers’ money would not finance the proposed purchase. The funds come from the sale of the Bel-Air house, which a businessman donated to the university system in 1972. The remaining $2.4 million or so from the sale would be kept for maintenance, utilities and other costs.

The full Board of Trustees is expected today to authorize the start of negotiations for the deal.

The two-story Belmont Heights house was restored and redecorated in 1980 as a “design house” for a Long Beach charity fund-raising event. It has beamed ceilings, highly polished woodwork, stained-glass windows, marble fireplaces and many architectural details that evoke the 1930s, when well-to-do Californians built their fantasy version of Mediterranean villas.

The home is owned by a married couple, both doctors.