There Could Be a Grand Bargain on the Hotel/Conference Center That Would Meet Faculty and Other Interests and Save the Faculty Center
UCLA has now given the Faculty Association a version of the hotel/conference center business plan dated February 9, 2012. The problem is that the Faculty Association had a public documents request pending since last November. There is a long interval between February 9 and March 20 when the February 9 document was made available. (It was made available to a neighborhood group on March 19.) You can read the document below. If you go to page 16 of the document (page 17 of the pdf), you will see that the notion of blending the hotel with the guest house and the Lake Arrowhead center was already part of the plan.
Note that it is not just the Faculty Association that was denied access for a lengthy period. So, too, was the Academic Senate. Right now, Murphy Hall evidently wants to bull ahead. But there is an alternative route UCLA could consider rather than just bulling ahead. There is a Grand Bargain to be had that could satisfy faculty needs and the needs of other interested parties, including the donor.
The faculty has had two interests regarding this project. First, there was a substantial group of faculty that objected to the demolition of the existing Faculty Center in the original – and now defunct – plan. It was clear that a) the Faculty Club would not survive the interim period of construction under the original plan and b) the proposed Club in the new facility would have been a mere shadow of the existing Club, even if it did somehow survive. The second faculty interest was not having a facility built with shaky finances that would end up costing the campus – one way or another – money it doesn’t need to waste.
The faculty’s first interest was partly dealt with by moving the location of the proposed hotel/conference center to parking structure 6 and dropping the demolition of the Faculty Center. But that left the Faculty Center with preexisting financial problems which also threaten its continuation. Indeed, the more competing facilities for conferences and meals on campus are built, the greater the financial threat to the Faculty Center.
The second faculty interest, as noted above, is that the project be financially sound on a stand-alone basis. If it isn’t, it will end up costing the campus money. The new plan – as earlier posts noted – deals with the soundness issue in two ways. A) It reduces the scale of the hotel. What that shows is that if you make the hotel smaller, financial viability goes up and financial risk goes down. B) It blends the hotel with two existing facilities.
The implication of “A” for further scaling down is obvious. But what about “B”? In fact, all campus projects are de facto blended with the entire campus budget. UCLA will never allow a default on any debt it incurs. So everything in reality is blended with everything. The particular blending chosen for the plan is creative to be sure. (Have you ever tried driving to Lake Arrowhead recently in contemporary traffic?) But it means nothing in practice. The blending was always there and could have been put into the original plan proposal or any plan for any capital project on campus. Blending does not make the hotel more viable on a stand-alone basis. It is an accounting fiction.
There are other interest groups involved in this project. Private Westside hotel owners are upset about the competition from the hotel and could – if they choose – litigate and delay the project. Neighbor groups were partly assuaged by the move to a more central campus location but, apparently, not totally assuaged.
So here is the question: Is there a Grand Bargain that could be reached that could deal with the concerns of the varying groups involved. Note that when blending was put into the plan, it opened the door to the idea that the project didn’t all have to be in one location. So here is a potential outline for an alternative, a Grand Bargain:
1) Scale back the plan further, particularly the number of hotel rooms. That will boost the occupancy rate, reduce competition with outside hotels, and make the plan more financially sound and less risky. A smaller new project also reduces remaining neighborhood objections.
2) Blend the Faculty Center into the plan. It is a lot closer to the proposed hotel/conference center than Lake Arrowhead! It’s only a short walk from the Faculty Center to either the proposed hotel/conference center or the Guest House. UCLA’s administration has been seeking a formal accord with the Faculty Center’s board, at least since the 1990s. (If you poke around in the library of documents related to the hotel/conference center project posted earlier on this blog, you will find unsigned proposed deals.) Some of the money saved by downscaling the hotel project could be used to upgrade the conference facilities at the Faculty Center, including modernization of the audio-visual equipment. Needed repairs to the Center could also be made. Of course, the Center already has meal service. The Faculty Center could be renamed in honor of the Luskins.
This suggestion for a Grand Bargain is just an outline. The financials would have to be re-worked. There would need to be a second trip to the Regents with a revised, compromise plan. The fuzzy relationship between UCLA and the Faculty Center would need to be formalized. There would have to be an openness to a change in direction on this project in Murphy Hall. Since faculty interests are at stake, the Academic Senate could take the lead in getting the interest groups together at least to look at the possibilities.
Would a Grand Bargain be a painful adjustment in strategy for some? Maybe. Would it be better than the current approach? Definitely. It’s a plan, don’t you think?
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Note: The February 9thdocument referred to above is at: