Legislator Calls Hospital ‘Ideal’ for Campus

Touring Camarillo State Hospital for the first time Thursday, Assemblyman Ted Lempert said he now knows why there is such enthusiasm to turn the shuttered facility into a college campus.

With its Spanish-style buildings and distinctive bell tower, the San Carlos Democrat said, the hospital grounds already have the look and feel of a university.

“If you were going to start from scratch, this is the kind of campus you would build,” said Lempert, who as chairman of the Assembly’s higher education committee could become a key player in the effort to launch a college campus at the old state hospital property.

“It’s a beautiful site and it seems ideal for a college campus,” he said. “This could easily become the jewel of the [Cal State] system.”

That is exactly what Cal State officials are hoping will happen.

In September, Cal State trustees agreed to take control of the now-shuttered state hospital and convert it into the new home for the Ventura County campus of Cal State Northridge.

Under that plan, the satellite campus will remain an extension of the Northridge university until it can attract enough students and funding to support itself and become an independent university, Cal State Channel Islands.

The trustees’ vote was contingent on the governor’s willingness to contribute $6.5 million to operate the campus and turn a number of its buildings into classrooms and administrative offices.

With Gov. Pete Wilson set to weigh in on that issue in January, when he releases his budget proposal, university boosters are scrambling to whip up support for the conversion project.

“I want to have him as a strong ally as we go into this,” said state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-Santa Barbara), who invited Lempert to tour the site Thursday. “Any legislation we get to the governor’s desk will have Assemblyman Lempert’s fingerprints on it.”

With CSUCI President Handel Evans as his guide, Lempert got a good tour of the grounds.

Evans pointed out buildings that will be transformed into classrooms and administrative space, and he showed Lempert an area that will be leased to businesses, in an effort to generate money to help the campus pay its own way.

“It’s obviously a hospital, not a university,” Evans told him. “But we’re getting there.”

For his part, Lempert said he was glad to have the opportunity to see the facility firsthand.

“This has university written all over it,” Lempert said. “Just the setting alone is really going to draw students.”