Campus Pointe faces a court fight
Fresno Bee 4/13/07
Trustees for the California State University system approved an environmental impact report and other plans last month to prepare Campus Pointe for construction. But Sierra Vista Mall's owners allege that the environmental report was flawed in several ways -- and that the approval was invalid because one trustee has a contract to build a 14-screen theater in the complex.
"The picture, we think, is that there was a rush to get this project approved," said David Doyle, a Fresno attorney representing mall owner LandValue 77, manager LandValue Management and managing member James Huelskamp. A firm associated with Doyle's filed the complaint in Sacramento County Superior Court.
University officials said they would have no comment because they had not yet received or reviewed a copy of the complaint.
Campus Pointe -- to be built just east of Save Mart Center at Shaw Avenue and Highway 168 -- will have 540 apartments, a 200-room hotel and 230,000 square feet of retail and office space. It would be built on university land by Fresno developer Ed Kashian.
The complaint cites impacts on air quality, traffic, water supplies and the local economy, among other things, and says none was addressed adequately by the environmental report.
It also says that Campus Pointe will have an advantage over competing businesses because Fresno State officials say they are exempt from Fresno and Clovis planning and zoning rules.
In addition, the complaint says that Campus Pointe violates the legal basis of the CSU system because it does not further the university's education mission.
But perhaps the biggest issue that Sierra Vista Mall's owners have with Campus Pointe is its theater, which is seen as competition for the 16-screen Criterion Cinemas that opened in December at Sierra Vista, less than three miles east of Campus Pointe on Shaw Avenue.
The complaint also alleges that CSU trustee Moctesuma Esparza's involvement in the project -- his Maya Cinemas plans to build the project's theater -- is itself grounds for overturning the approval.
A law cited in the complaint says that officials "shall not be financially interested in any contract made by them in their official capacity, or by any body or board of which they are members."
At the trustees meeting last month, a lawyer for the CSU system said that Esparza's contract was with Kashian rather than the university and therefore did not create a conflict. She did say Esparza was still required to abstain from voting on the project, and he did so.
In addition to the CSU trustees and system, defendants named by the lawsuit include Kashian Enterprises, Maya Cinemas and the CSU Fresno Association, a nonprofit university auxiliary that oversees Save Mart Center and Campus Pointe.
Fran Blackney, business advocate and communications director for the Clovis Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber has been invited to join in the lawsuit but has not yet decided whether to do so.