CSU Campus Expected to Be Built Near Camarillo : College: Administrators recommend land in a greenbelt west of the city. Trustees are scheduled to decide next week.

California State University trustees are expected to select farmland west of Camarillo for a four-year college campus in Ventura County, university officials said Tuesday.

Selection of the site, north of the Ventura Freeway and east of Central Avenue, would end a six-year search for a permanent campus to replace the existing Cal State Northridge satellite campus in Ventura.

University system trustees are scheduled to make their final choice next Tuesday and Wednesday in Long Beach, officials said.

Administrators in the office of the university system’s chancellor decided to recommend the 320-acre Duntley/Chaffee property partly because it has fewer problems than two other sites near Oxnard and Ventura, said David Leveille, director of institutional relations.

“We have considered not only the environmental study, but also the affordability, the buildability and the community support,” Leveille said. “The cities of Camarillo, Oxnard and Thousand Oaks all adopted resolutions supporting the Duntley/Chaffee site.”

Camarillo Mayor David Smith said Tuesday that the city will consider annexing the property. The move would expedite delivery of basic services such as water and sewer, while giving the city some control over development of the college and the surrounding area.

The college would be built in the middle of a greenbelt of undeveloped land that separates Camarillo from Oxnard.

“The loss of the greenbelt is one of the unavoidable costs,” Smith said. “But the values that we receive in terms of cultural, economic and educational gains are more important than the cost.”

Camarillo City Manager J. William Little said he expects the quiet city of 54,000 to change in character as the college grows to its 20,000-student capacity in 20 years.

“We will become a college town in many ways,” he said.

Joyce Kennedy, director of Cal State Northridge, Ventura Campus, urged county residents to support whatever the trustees decide.

“If we don’t come to some agreement now, we can forget any university in this century,” Kennedy said.

Lack of support in Ventura two years ago helped kill a bid to locate the university at the Taylor Ranch, an ocean-view bluff just west of the city. And a lack of support also has steered university officials away from another property just east of Ventura.

“I think the city of Ventura will long rue the day that the Taylor Ranch was not selected,” Ventura Mayor Richard Francis said.

A third prime site, south of Oxnard, was rejected primarily because it has hazardous wastes from abandoned oil-drilling operations, officials said.

Leveille said one of the two owners of the favored Camarillo-area property is willing to negotiate a sale, but the second is not.

“But we are optimistic. The threat of eminent domain is there,” he said, referring to the university’s power to condemn privately owned land for public use.

After paying for the new environmental study, the university still has about $6 million of the original $7 million the Legislature set aside to buy land for a campus.

It would cost up to $10 million to build the first phase of the Ventura County university, which would offer courses for about 2,000 juniors, seniors and graduate students by the year 2000, Leveille said.

No money has been allotted to build either the initial phase or to expand into a four-year campus by 2010.

But state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) said he is confident that funds for the Ventura County campus will be available when the time comes to build it.

“We’re obviously in a very difficult budget situation right now,” he said. “But we’re going to bounce back.”

Hart said he was pleased that the Camarillo site has not caused divisive debate.

“I think people in the community realize this is probably our last opportunity for a university,” he said. “If the consensus were to fall apart now, the university would be in real jeopardy.”

One potential problem at the Camarillo site is winter flooding, because runoff from nearby mountains drains onto it. But grading could take care of the problem for the first phase, Leveille said.

He said the university system would also ask the federal government to speed up its proposal to build a $15-million to $20-million flood-control project on the property. No date is set for construction of the project.

The university would be near a California Youth Authority camp, which houses criminals as old as 24, but Leveille said he expects that will not create any problems. He said university officials have already asked for increased security such as remote cameras and more fencing at the youth camp.

Proposed Cal State University Sites

1. Sudden Ranch Site: 350 acres south of Foothill Road between Saticoy Avenue and Kimball Road, east of Ventura

2. Duntley/Chaffee property: RECOMMENDED SITE; 320 acres east of Central Avenue and south of Santa Clara Avenue, west of Camarillo and next t the California Youth Authority facility.

3. Donion property: 308 acres south of Wooly Road between Rose and Rice Avenues, east of Oxnard.