Ventura County Community College District in talks to buy property for new Santa Paula campus

The dream of a college campus in Santa Paula, deferred for 20 years, is alive again and closer than ever to reality.

Ventura County Community College District officials have identified a property for a satellite campus and are in discussions to buy it from its current owner, the Santa Paula-based citrus and avocado grower Limoneira. The plan still needs approval from the district board, but college officials, Limoneira executives and Santa Paula civic leaders all say this is the closest they’ve come to giving the Santa Clara River Valley a permanent, full-service college campus to replace the leased storefront that is currently home to Ventura College East Campus.

The property the district has its eye on is just south of Highway 126, at the east end of Santa Paula. It’s across the freeway from the new Harvest at Limoneira housing development, and adjacent to property Limoneira plans to sell to a developer to build a new county hospital to replace the current Santa Paula Hospital.

The site has been discussed as a possible community college location since 2002, when Ventura County voters approved a $356 million bond measure for the college district that included plans for “education centers” in Santa Paula and elsewhere. The district abandoned its plans for those satellite campuses a few years later, citing rising construction costs and dwindling bond funds.

The current East Campus offers classes in a few majors, but a full-service satellite campus in Santa Paula would allow many more students in Santa Paula, Fillmore and the surrounding areas to complete their community college degrees without having to commute to the main Ventura College campus — a major obstacle for students who don’t have cars. Ventura College officials are also interested in working with California Lutheran University or CSU Channel Islands to offer university classes on the site, allowing students to complete a four-year bachelor’s degree without leaving Santa Paula.

“It’s a wonderful dream, and things seem to be aligning well to actually make it come to fruition,” Ventura College President Kim Hoffmans said. “It’s something the community is excited about and has asked for for many years.”

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The Limoneira property is 20 acres and the college district would need 8 or 10 acres of it, according to a district report on the plan presented in October to the Ventura College Academic Senate. That document recommends that the Ventura County Community College District set aside $8 million from its reserves to buy the property and up to $20 million in state funding to build the campus.

Harold Edwards, Limoneira’s CEO, said the property is available now for $1 million an acre.

“We want to sell them whatever they want to buy,” he said. “They’re probably looking to buy it for less, and we have opportunities to sell it for more. … We have an obligation to our shareholders to get the highest and best value for that property.”

Edwards said he’s been talking to Hoffmans and other college officials, and they are committed to the plan. The main thing holding up a deal, Edwards said, is the lack of approval and funding from the Ventura County Community College District Board of Trustees.

“We want them to win, so we’re trying to be very supportive, but we have to win ourselves,” Edwards said. “That property is on the open market, and if they miss it, then they missed it.”

Hoffmans said she expects the matter to go before the board sometime in the spring 2023 semester.

“There are so many moving pieces,” she said. “In an ideal world, I wish I could wave a wand and make it happen, but we have to get alignment with the college and the district. Hopefully, the land is still available once we’ve completed this process, and if it’s not, we’ll have to look at other potential opportunities in the area.”

If the district buys the Limoneira property, it will be at least five years before anything is built there, Hoffmans said. There is currently a freeze on state funding for new community college construction, and with the state projecting multibillion-dollar deficits in the coming fiscal years, it’s unclear when that freeze would be lifted.

That could leave the district holding a property it can’t afford to build on. Dianne McKay, the current chair of the district Board of Trustees, said that’s one reason she’s skeptical of the Limoneira land as a campus site. She represents Area 2 on the board, which covers the Conejo Valley, the Santa Rosa Valley and parts of Camarillo, but her term ends in December so she won’t be on the board when it votes on the proposal.

McKay said she’s also concerned because last year, the district asked the Chancellor’s Office of the California Community Colleges system to make the current Santa Paula campus an educational center with its own source of state funding and the state refused, because the campus didn’t meet the state’s minimum of the equivalent of 500 full-time students.

The East Campus storefront location currently has enrollment equivalent to about 150 full-time students. The district’s Facilities Master Plan calls for increasing enrollment in Santa Paula first to 500 full-time students and then to 1,000, but there isn’t room in the current location for that many students.

“The people in Santa Paula are holding fast to the dream of having an education center out there, but I’m just not sure it’s a financial reality,” McKay said. “I want to deliver education out there, but I’m not sure that building a center is the best way to do it.”

'A promise unfulfilled'

In Santa Paula, there are still some hard feelings over the district’s decision to abandon a bond-funded campus, said Laura Espinosa, a board member with the group Latino Town Hall in Santa Paula and a member of the City Council from 1996 to 2002.

“This promise went unfulfilled for 20 years,” she said. “We see this as an educational component that is very much tied to the economic development of the entire Santa Clara River Valley. That’s why this is so important to us.”

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Espinosa said Latino Town Hall helped bring the idea back to life in 2016 and began lobbying the city and the college district. The Santa Paula City Council is fully behind the proposal, and City Manager Dan Singer said the city helped connect Limoneira and the college district.

A new campus would provide a host of benefits to Santa Paula even before it opens, Espinosa said, by providing good-paying union jobs on the construction site. The district’s proposal calls for a multi-story building of up to 110,000 square feet — nearly 10 times the size of the storefront the district now leases in Santa Paula.

Once it opens, the campus would bring educational opportunities to students in an area that has been historically underserved by the higher education system. Santa Paula’s population is more than 80% Latino and Fillmore’s is more than 70%. The two cities also have among the lowest median household incomes in Ventura County.

In addition to the benefits of more college classes and administrative offices, so that students won’t have to go to Ventura to finish their educations, Espinosa said she’s excited about the prospect of an early education program that could provide free preschool to Santa Paula families.

“That can be a model for other cities,” she said. “If you’re providing early preschool education, the data shows those students are going to be more successful in their academic careers and their chosen professional careers.”

On Oct. 20, the Santa Paula proposal failed its first public test, an advisory vote by the Ventura College Academic Senate. The faculty members voted 13-2, with three abstentions, against a motion to support the plan for a new campus.

According to minutes from Academic Senate meetings, the faculty members’ concerns included uncertainty about board support, whether there would be enough enrollment to support the campus, and the price of the Limoneira land.

Hoffmans said she didn’t interpret the vote as permanent opposition to the plan, but a request for further study and more information.

“They’re not saying they don’t support education in the community,” she said. “They had questions, and we’re working to strengthen the proposal based on their questions.”

Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: College district in talks to buy property for new Santa Paula campus