The BID for Westwood and the Hotel Blending
No, not the kind of bid you see at auctions. BID stands for Business Improvement District. Under state law, businesses (property owners) in particular areas can form a BID and assess themselves for upgrading their neighborhoods. In theory, the upgrading improves the business climate and property values. There are many BIDs in the LA area.
Westwood at one time had a BID but it disappeared some years ago in a financial scandal. However, a new one has formed and is reporting progress. Still, if you walk up Westwood Boulevard towards the campus, you see many empty stores for lease. There is a (long) way to go.
The Westwood BID had a recent meeting which you can read about at:
Which takes us to that inevitable topic: UCLA’s proposed hotel/conference center. You can see why the local business community, especially hotels, is not thrilled about a tax-subsidized public venture that competes with them, tax-free. You can see why, if the hotel is built as planned, they are likely to complain to the tax authorities – federal & local – to the extent the hotel tries to fill its 250 rooms with commercial business.
Now you can say that campus interests come first; who cares about Westwood? The problem is that if the hotel loses money because it is forced not to take commercial business, one way or another the cost will be paid by the campus (as well as Westwood). Of course, you will never see those loses explicitly – and neither will the Regents who approved the project without setting up any mechanism for after-the-fact auditing. (What ever happened to notions of due diligence?) The reason that you will never see the losses is that the hotel will be blended into the larger business enterprises run by the university.
It’s the blending you will need to keep in mind in years to come when a success for the project is proclaimed. But in case you forget, here is a little reminder: