Not to worry?
You might have notice the article in the LA Times about concrete buildings in LA County that were prone to collapse in a major earthquake. The article included an interactive graphic for selected areas including Westwood. Among the buildings the LA Times listed was 924 Westwood Blvd., an office building owned by UCLA (the Regents). The image above is a screenshot, not the actual interactive graphic which you can find at http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-earthquake-concrete-20131013-dto,0,1555748.htmlstory. However, here is the text of what is on the graphic including a response by UCLA saying it believes the building is safe:
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“The 924 Westwood building is a 10-story concrete frame structure with a unique original design that has positive seismic safety attributes including its frame redundancy, frame placement and reinforcement detailing. “Non-ductile” frame buildings noted as vulnerable to earthquakes do not typically possess these positive seismic attributes. “The building underwent seismic enhancements in 1990, including the addition of concrete shear walls at the base of the tower. Documentation of that work filed with the city is attached here. [Note: If you click on that link, you get an error message. But another link on the page is possibly the correct one: http://documents.latimes.com/924-westwood-blvd-los-angeles/ Yours truly has asked the Times for the correct link.] “UCLA had leased space in the building prior to our purchase of the building in 2012. The University is currently working with the structural engineering firm of Nabih Youssef and Associates, which is designing fiber-reinforced polymer wrapping of some basement columns for additional very minor fine tuning of the structural performance of the building.”
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If anyone with engineering expertise has a comment, please use the comment option to provide it.
PS: After the Big One, the UCLA Grand Hotel might get some business from the Palomar and the W in Westwood, since both hotels are on the LA Times‘ list. Oops! Forgot! It can’t take commercial business.