8 minute read
SPECIAL FEATURE
WHAT WE HAVE HERE is a failure to communicate
BY TOM FRANCISKOVICH
Like many San Luis Obispo residents, I felt a huge amount of pride for Cal Poly’s historic appearance in the NCCA basketball tournament last month. As I was driving to a meeting on the day of their game against Wichita State, I tuned into AM radio to catch part of the action. The first half had just ended with the top-ranked Shockers up 32-13 over the Mustangs, and the broadcaster filled the airtime by interviewing Cal Poly athletic director Don Oberhelman. The broadcaster was amused by how the national sports media had such limited knowledge and understanding about the university—many had never heard of it, or confused it with Cal Poly Pomona— so he asked the athletic director about it. Oberhelman then said, “We want to take San Luis Obispo out of Cal Poly. Our name is not Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, it’s just Cal Poly… Cal Poly Pomona is Cal Poly Pomona… but we’re just Cal Poly, and that’s what we want to be known as.” My feelings of goodwill for the basketball team rattled out of the rim like the Mustangs’ jump shots that day. “How in the world do you take San Luis Obispo out of Cal Poly?” I thought to myself as I turned off the radio…
Current enrollment: 19,721
Proposed enrollment: 24,721
Current students living on-campus: 7,223
Proposed additional on-campus housing: 1,400
Current students living off-campus: 12,498
Proposed students living off-campus: 16,098
Current 4-year graduation rate: 31%
(source: California Polytechnic State University)
San Luis Obispo
Owner-occupied housing units: 7,547 (39%)
Rental vacancy rate: 5.7%
Net off-campus available housing units: 664
(source: 2010 United States Census)
Net number of additional students who will require off-campus housing with the proposed enrollment increase and on-campus housing expansion: 2,936
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In so many ways the relationship over the years between Cal Poly and the City of San Luis Obispo has been symbiotic. Imagine for a moment one without the other. Cal Poly, without the support and charm of its host city would be unable to recruit students. That is why CSU Dominguez Hills, for example, is not overflowing with applications from hopeful high school seniors won over by the magic of its location. Now, consider for a moment San Luis Obispo without Cal Poly. Without the white collar, head of household jobs it provides and without the discretionary spending its students bring, instead of the “Happiest Place on Earth,” the destiny of San Luis Obispo could very well have been a type of Bakersfield-by-the-Sea. The fact is that each one needs the other, desperately. Yet, despite a lot of rhetoric from leadership on both sides, there is not a formal, on-going process for the left hand to talk with the right. And both, to a large extent, do not fully appreciate what one does for the other; instead it is as if each woke up on third base believing it had just hit a triple.
Nothing illustrates this point more than Cal Poly’s 2013 Fall Conference when President Jeffrey Armstrong announced that he intended to add another 5,000 students to an already overcrowded campus [refer to “Bursting at the Seams” Oct/Nov 2013 for a primer on the subject]. While it created some buzz within the administration, and certainly added dramatic flair to an otherwise uneventful conference, the residents of San Luis Obispo took the news about the same way as the Ukrainians living in Crimea did after Putin made his recent annexation announcement. The fact is that the city is completely maxed out in its ability to house Cal Poly’s students offcampus. So, to increase that number by 25% without any credible plan, and without any meaningful discussion with the community, the announcement appeared to come out of left field and did not go over well.
Up to the point of the declaration, Cal Poly had been basking in the glow of goodwill from the community who applauded its decision, which was made public in May of last year, to build 1,400 additional on-campus housing units. Although not a solution to the problem, it seemed to be a step in the right direction. Yet by the end of the summer, the community learned that Cal Poly had admitted its largest freshman class in its history—a 28% growth from the year before. So, it did not take an engineering degree
to realize that those 1,400 spots, to be opened in 2018, were already spoken for, which does not account for the other 5,000 souls. All told, within a few short years, the problem, the community learned, was about to become much worse, as somewhere between 2,600 and 3,600 additional students would require off-campus housing. Simple supply and demand in a town
already at maximum capacity in its rental market begs the question: where are we going to put these kids?
And, beyond that, how will adding all of these extra students off-campus affect the very character of our community? [Full disclosure: I am writing this article from my home, which is two-and-half miles from campus in the City of San Luis Obispo. As I type these words on my laptop, I can see a group of Cal Poly students— my new neighbors—walking around on their roof, drinking beer and throwing oranges at each other.] City councilman Dan Carpenter has answered that question by asserting the addition of more students “will denigrate our neighborhoods and quality of life.” So, it appears that we have arrived at a point where collectively we should decide what exactly “quality of life” means. Does it mean having the ability to enjoy peace and quiet, or does it mean having the ability to hang out on your roof drinking beer with your roommates while thumping some tunes and chucking perfectly good citrus? It’s a fair question. And it deserves an honest answer.
If San Luis Obispo is to become Isla Vista, the de facto village for students at UC Santa Barbara, as many long-time residents now fear is happening, then that should be part of the discussion. Is it possible to designate a zone or a neighborhood within the city exclusively for student housing? Community members living near the proposed 1,400-unit student housing development claim that it is already underway, and have complained vigorously that the plans were not given due process for community review. The university did hold three public forums, but many dismissed the sessions as “sales pitches” and not a legitimate opportunity to discuss concerns. Despite the negative feedback from the community, up to this point, Cal Poly has continued to forge ahead with its plans to build at the Grand Avenue entrance. The college cited being able to “add the greatest number of additional students onto campus at the lowest cost” and that it will “keep first-year residences clustered in one area.”
Sometimes the answers to really big problems are so simple you cannot see them. Cal Poly is one of the largest landowners in the State of California. With 9,678 acres at its disposal, why antagonize long-time city residents by turning a parking lot adjacent to a neighborhood into student housing? Why not take a look at the vast swaths of land now used mostly for agriculture near the Highland Drive entrance? Cal Poly could repurpose that area for residences and then, if needed, it could relocate
its agricultural land elsewhere within the university’s boundaries. That would open up space at a reduced cost, and it would be the perfect spot for a massive on-campus publicprivate housing project. cash-poor public institutions. A company like American Campus Communities (ACC) is a publicly-traded real estate investment trust that does this sort of thing for a living. The concept is simple: Cal Poly would lease their land to ACC for a reasonable, yet below market rent; ACC would then bear the cost of constructing the on-campus housing; ACC then owns and manages the properties for a period of 30 years, during which time it collects the rents; at the end of 30 years Cal Poly buys the property for a buck. It’s a win for Cal Poly, a win for the community, and a win for ACC. In a relatively short period, the housing crisis could be eliminated as 5,000 – 10,000 housing units go up on campus.
It’s time to get serious about this issue because we all have a lot to lose, yet so much to possibly gain. It’s not enough to add 1,400 units four years into the future, doing it the oldfashioned way by floating a bond and owning the property, while at the same time adding students far beyond its capacity to house them. It’s time to set up some sort of formal ongoing
program, or forum, or commission to ensure that all of the voices are heard and smart, wellconsidered policy is advanced. It’s time to finally recognize and fully embrace the fact that the futures of Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo are inextricably linked. One entity cannot be truly great unless the other one is also. And, as much as you may try, it is not possible to take San Luis Obispo out of Cal Poly. SLO LIFE
