Cal State Trustees OK New Dorm at Fullerton Campus

Plans for a new four-story dormitory at Cal State Fullerton were approved Tuesday by California State University trustees meeting in Sacramento.

Also Tuesday, a key trustees’ committee authorized a site search in north San Diego County for a full-scale branch campus of San Diego State University.

Construction of the Fullerton dormitory will begin in May, campus officials said. The building is scheduled to open in September, 1987.

It will be the first dormitory owned by Cal State Fullerton. Only one other campus in the 19-school California State University system, in Hayward, does not have dorms.

Until about 15 years ago, the Fullerton campus leased privately built dorms on Nutwood Avenue across from the university. But the university dropped its lease in the early 1970s because of low demand for dormitory rooms.

Since then, enrollment has grown and university officials say a conservative trend among students has made on-campus living fashionable again. With the new demand for dorm rooms, President Jewel Plummer Cobb pledged that a dormitory would be built on campus.

The building will house 396 students, male and female, in 66 three-bedroom apartments, with two students per bedroom. The plans also call for a four-story parking tower.

Earlier in the academic year the trustees voted to issue bonds to finance the $6.92-million dorm at the northeast corner of the campus, south of the arboretum.

Plans to build a Cal State University branch campus in north San Diego County received a major boost when a trustees’ subcommittee accepted a report endorsing the project and authorized a search for a site.

The subcommittee’s action came after consultants hired to study the need for a new campus told trustees that construction of a four-year school is vital to accommodate the explosive growth expected to sweep over north San Diego County into the next century.

‘A Crucial Step’

“All of our numbers predict the same thing for the year 2010,” consultant Max Tadlock told the five-member Ad-Hoc Committee on Off-Campus Facilities. “You will have a large-scale campus demand, and you do not have a way to meet that now.”

Sen. William A. Craven (R-Carlsbad), who has piloted the drive for a new campus, called the committee’s vote “a crucial step along the long road to realization of our dream.”