faculty center

A news note on the UCLA hotel/conference center issue. The Hotel Bel-Air, just north of campus, is about to reopen, albeit with a labor dispute in progress. And Marilyn Monroe (at left and in the video below from a 1953 visit to the Hotel) won’t be staying there this time around. From the LA Times: When the Hotel Bel-Air reopens next week after a two-year renovation, the resort’s mascot swans — Chloe, Athena and Hercules — will still occupy the lush 12-acre property visited by presidents, movie stars and other dignitaries. But absent will be most of the union workers…

Yesterday, we posted a reminder that we are all waiting for the revised UCLA hotel plan. From a Fox TV News press release comes word that if UCLA goes ahead with a grand hotel/conference center plan that then flops, there will still be hope. Help will be on the way: After over a decade of running restaurants in some of the top hotels around the world, traveling the globe and running an award-winning boutique hotel in London, (Gerald) Ramsay knows firsthand the crucial importance of surpassing guests’ highest expectations. In the series, Ramsay and a team of hospitality experts will…

The fall quarter is getting under way and (soon???) there should be a re-studied plan from the UCLA administration on the Grand Hotel project that was proposed – but halted after protests from the Academic Senate – to replace the Faculty Center. We are waiting patiently for the (revised???) plan. But in the meantime – a modest??? musical contribution – to salute the UCLA construction empire:

The narration on the video below says that UCLA has a plan to convert from a “commuter campus” to a “residential campus.” Hence, there must be a lot of new construction and demolition of old buildings. In addition, there is a large building going up near the old hospital. The Daily Bruin recently carried an article discussing and illustrating the demolition and replacement of an engineering building: http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2011/08/engineering_1a_building_demolished_to_be_replaced_by_modernized_facility Other construction is going on in mid-campus. Might the empire have enough to do with these various projects without demolishing the Faculty Center and replacing it with a 280-room hotel? Just asking.

As previous posts on this blog have noted, a local developer bought and cleared the old Hollywood video store site at the corner of Wilshire and Gayley with plans to open a new Westwood hotel. LAObserved reported yesterday that the Wilshire-Gayley plan is moving along, with an architect hired to deal with the odd triangular shape of the site. (There is a further link in the LAObserved article to a more detailed piece on the proposed hotel.) You can find the article at http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2011/08/westwood_village_hotel_wo.php Readers of this blog will also know that UCLA has been proposing to build a 280-room…

As the 1951 fundraising letter above indicates, the UCLA Faculty Center began with contributions from various sources. (Click on the image for a clearer look.) The Regents apparently contributed less than half, perhaps a third, of the original funding. However, documents available do not make it clear who owns the building (as opposed to the land under it which clearly is university property). What is known is that over the years, there were discussions of a formal contract (Memorandum of Understanding – MOU) between UCLA and the Board of the Faculty Center. Below you can find a draft of an…

UCLA (Covel on the first day) is the site of a conference sponsored by Governor Jerry Brown on “Local Renewable Energy Resources.” You can find the agenda for the event at: http://gov.ca.gov/s_energyconference.php Now here is an interesting side note to the conference. Apparently, the participants and guests can be accommodated without a big hassle (and without a new on-campus hotel). If you click on the website above, you will find the statement: Hotel information: The nearby Luxe Hotel is providing rooms at a group rate. Call (800) 468-3541 and provide the group code UCLAGOV to book a room. Below that,…