Below is an exchange of emails between Ann Karagozian, chair of the Academic Senate, and various faculty members who wrote to her and others expressing concern about the proposed demolition of the Faculty Center and its replacement by a conference center/hotel. Various document links are noted in the email below.

================================

Dear Prof. Costa and other Senate colleagues,

Thank you for your email message, below. As you are aware, the Senate has received a number of presentations from the administration regarding the proposal to build a Residential Conference Center/Faculty Club on the site of the present Faculty Center. Presentations that were given over the past year are documented at our Senate website at http://www.senate.ucla.edu/ProposedRCC-FC.htm.

As you also may be aware, at the “Save the Faculty Center” meeting on January 24, I publicly issued an invitation for the UCLA administration as well as to Prof. Dick Weiss, the President of the Faculty Center Association, to provide our Senate’s Council on Planning and Budget with presentations on the financial feasibility plans for both entities. Our regulations are such that CPB “specifically reviews and formally articulates a Senate view regarding the campus budget and each major campus space-use and building project at each project’s proposal, planning, and building stages” (http://www.senate.ucla.edu/FormsDocs/bylaws/ch4-4-3.htm#b65_3 ). We are following our normal Senate procedures in having these presentations take place, so that all the financial information presently available is made known to the appropriate Senate body. Because of the relevance of this proposal to our Faculty Welfare Committee (FWC) and to our University Emeriti and Pre-Retirement Relations Committee (UEPRRC), the chairs of these committees, in addition to the Senate leadership (Andy Leuchter, Robin Garrell, and I) were also invited to attend the presentations with CPB. Both parties accepted my invitation to make presentations, and they took place at the CPB meeting on Monday, February 28, 2011. A large number of questions were posed at that meeting, and answers provided; these will be documented in the CPB meeting minutes when they are approved at the Council’s next meeting.

CPB is now in the process of evaluating the materials provided at the meeting, in addition to new materials, in order to articulate the Senate view on this proposed project. Most of the materials that were considered by CPB at the February 28 meeting are now posted on the Senate website at http://www.senate.ucla.edu/ProposedRCC-FC.htm . Just a few minutes ago, the Faculty Center Board requested that some materials considered by CPB on their current and recent budgets not be posted for public viewing, and we are respecting that request, although these data are being considered by CPB in their present deliberations. A letter dated November, 2008, from the Faculty Center Board President John Edmond to Chancellor Block, indicating support for the proposed Conference Center, is also included on the Senate website; this too is being discussed by CPB. A report by a consulting firm that UCLA employed to be able to provide estimates of cost projections, occupancy rates, and the like, which formed the basis for the financial pro formas in the administration’s presentation, is currently being redacted before dissemination. That process should be completed within the next 10 days and the report will be made available not only to CPB, but will be posted on our Senate website as soon as it is released. Some of the non-sensitive data from that report are in the process of being made available to CPB right now.

I hope that the above discussion is helpful to all of you in understanding the Senate process that we are following in evaluating this proposed building project for this campus. There have been a great many proposals that have come before the UCLA Academic Senate this year, some of them with profound implications for the future of our University and the way it operates. In evaluating these proposals, like the RCC/FC proposal, we follow procedures that have served UCLA well for over 90 years. More information on these many issues may be found on our Senate website at http://www.senate.ucla.edu/ .

Sincerely,

Ann Karagozian

Chair, UCLA Academic Senate

From: Dora Costa [mailto:costa@econ.ucla.edu]

Ambrose	Richard	Professor of Environmental Health Sciences
Balmer	Paul	Professor of Mathematics
Bjork	Robert	Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Psychology
Carney	Judith	Professor of Geography
Clark	William	Professor Emeritus, Geography
Coroniti	Ferdinand	Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Costa	Dora	Professor of Economics
Courey	Albert	Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Cumberland	WG	Professor and Chair, Biostatistics
Dasgenais	John	Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
de Leeuw	Jan	Distinguished Professor and Chair of Statistics
Detels	Roger	Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases and Chair, Department of Epidemiology
Downey	Susan	Professor of Art History
Dubois	Ellen	Professor of History
Eisenberg	David	Paul D. Boyer Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Molecular Biology Institute/Director, UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics & Proteomics	/Distinguished Professor Biological Chemistry/Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Gandara	Patricia	Professor of Education
Gans	Eric	Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Garnett	John	Professor of Mathematics
Gatti	Richard	Rebecca Smith Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Grinnell	Alan	Professor of Physiology
Grody	Wayne	Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine /Pediatrics/Human Genetics; Director, Diagnostic Molecular Pathology Laboratory and Director, Orphan Disease Testing Center
Hasenfeld	Yeheskel	Professor of Social Welfare
Hecht	Susanna	Professor of Urban Planning
Hicks	Robert	Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Hopenhayn	Hugo	Professor of Economics
Howe	Daniel	Professor Emeritus of History, and 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner
Ito	Tatsuo	Professor of Electrical Engineering and Northrop Grumman Chair, Microwave and Millimeter Wave Electronics
Jura	Michael	Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Kaback	H. Ronald	Distinguished Professor of Physiology
Kahn	Matthew	Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability/Professor in Economics and Public Affairs
Klein	Cecilia	Professor of Art History
Krasne	Frank	Professor Emeritus on Recall, Dept of Psychology, Area Chair, Behavioral Neuroscience
Kreiman	Jody	Professor in Residence, Surgery — Head and Neck
Krogstad	Paul	Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology
Kruger	Lawrence	Distinguished Professor Recalled, Neurobiology
Lake	James	Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, and Human Genetics
Leamer	Edward	Chauncey J. Medberry Chair in Management, Anderson/ Professor in Economics and Statistics/ Director, Anderson Forecast
Lewis	Mary Ann	Professor of Nursing
Lionnet	Francoise	Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Mare	Robert	Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Mason	Thomas	Professor of Chemistry
McCumber	John	Professor of Germanic Languages
McWilliams	James	Professor of Atmospheric and Ocean Science
Miller	Bruce	Professor of Accounting, Anderson
Mitchell	Daniel JB	Professor Emeritus on Recall of Human Resources and Organizational Behavior, Anderson and School of Public Affairs
Munro	Pamela	Professor of Linguistics
Nagy	Joseph	Professor of English
Narins	Peter	Distinguished Professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology
Newman	William	Professor of Earth and Space Sciences
Paulson	Suzanne	Professor of Atmospheric and Ocean Science
Pebley	Anne	Fred H. Bixby Chair, Department of Community Health Science/Professor in Sociology
Read	Dwight	Professor of Anthropology
Rogowski	Ronald	Professor of Political Science
Rozengurt	Nora	Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Rozengurt	Enrique	Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Hirshberg Chair in Pancreatic Cancer Research/Director, CURE: Digestive Diseases Research Center/Chief of Research, Division of Digestive Diseases,
Sears	David	Professor of Political Science and Psychology
Simpson	Larry	Professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics
Stafsudd	Oscar	Professor of Electrical Engineering
Stefanovska	Malina	Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Stein	Sarah	Professor of History and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies
Stolzenbach	Keith	Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Stout	Lynn	Paul Hastings Professor of Corporate and Securities Law
Sutre	Giullame	Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Taylor	Charles	Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Trachtenberg	Marc	Professor of Political Science
Uittenbogaart	Christel	Professor of Pediatrics/Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics
Vroon	Ronald	Professor and Chair, Slavic Languages and Literature
Waldinger	Richard	Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Yang	Yang	Professor of Material Science and Engineering
Yao	Kung	Professor of Electrical Engineering
Young	Edward	Professor of Earth and Space Sciences
Zack	Jerome	Professor of Medicine — Hematology and Oncology/MIMG
Zame	William	Distinguished Professor of Economics
Zeitlin	Maurice	Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Zimmerman	Frederick	Professor and Chair, Health Services

The LA Conservancy has expressed concern about the replacement of the Faculty Center. The item below summarizes the organization’s position.

UCLA FACULTY CENTER THREATENED

The 1959 UCLA Faculty Center, now threatened with demolition.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has proposed a Residential Conference Center project that would demolish the campus’ 1959 Faculty Center.

Many nearby residents and members of the faculty oppose the project, including more than 200 people who signed a petition asking the Faculty Center Board of Governors to poll its members to gauge support for the demolition. An ad hoc committee called Save the Faculty Center has also formed to oppose the project.

The Faculty Center was designed by the architectural firm of Austin, Field and Fry. The firm was responsible for many civic buildings throughout Los Angeles, including serving as part of the team who designed the 1958 Los Angeles County Courthouse.

The design of the Faculty Center is unusual for its ranch-style residential architecture, particularly in a university and public institution setting. The post-and-beam construction, large floor-to-ceiling windows, and indoor-outdoor spaces create a casual, welcoming environment conducive to faculty lunches and convening.

In February 2011, the Conservancy responded to the Notice of Preparation (NOP) for the project, emphasizing the need to evaluate the Faculty Center as a historic resource. The building is potentially eligible for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources as a representative work of a notable architectural firm, as well as a unique example of California ranch-style architecture.

In our comments on the NOP, we urged UCLA to fully evaluate and examine preservation alternatives, including consideration of alternative sites for the proposed Residential Conference Center. We will keep you updated on this issue as it develops.

This article appears on the LA Conservancy’s website at http://www.laconservancy.org/issues/issues_ucla.php4

A similar article appeared on page 3 of the March-April 2011 newsletter of the organization. The newsletter is not on the web.

Let’s hope the powers-that-be get it right:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsePUn5-88c]

To: UCLA Faculty, Homeowner Associations, Community Councils, Other interested parties

From: Tracy Dudman, UCLA Capital Programs

Subject: Residential Conference Center Informational Meeting

After careful review of the comment letters received during the Notice of Preparation period for the UCLA Residential Conference Center (“the Project”), the University has gained invaluable input on the environmental issues that will be addressed in the Draft Environmental Impact Report (“Draft EIR”). The University has received extensive and detailed comments from the internal UCLA community, the local residential community, and the local business community and the University thanks all of these constituencies and other respondents for their interest in the Project.

Given the volume of responses received to date, the University has decided to move forward with the preparation of the Draft EIR, without convening the informal meeting the University had tentatively planned for late February. At this time, the University has no new information to present to the public regarding the design of the Project; however, we remain open to receiving comment letters regarding environmental issues, mitigation measures, and alternatives during preparation of the Draft EIR. The University is committed to fully analyzing all environmental issues in the Draft EIR, in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act and University policy.

We anticipate that the Draft EIR will be available for a 45-day public review period beginning in May 2011. During the 45-day review period, UCLA will host a Public Hearing to discuss the Project and provide a public venue to receive verbal and written comments on the Draft EIR. If you have any questions or comments regarding the foregoing, please contact Tracy Dudman at t.dudman@capnet.ucla.edu or send written comments to:

Tracy Dudman, Senior Planner, UCLA Capital Programs, 1060 Veteran Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euG1y0KtP_Q]

Readers of this blog know that UCLA has a plan to demolish the current Faculty Center and replace it with a conference center/hotel complex. Information on this issue – apart from prior blog entries – is available at

http://facultycenter.ucla.edu/FAQs.htm

At that link, you can find pro and arguments concerning the project. Added info is that an Ad Hoc Committee to Save the Faculty Center has petitioned the Faculty Center to hold a vote of the membership on the question:

Should the Faculty Center be torn down and be replaced by a Convention Center/Hotel and Faculty Club? Yes or No?

Arguments for and against the proposed facility and a cover letter explaining the history of the proposed project and the current financial situation of the Faculty Center are included with the ballot. The mailing will take place this week.

To find prior blog posts on this matter, use the search engine for this blog and search for “faculty center.”

You can take this video to mean either that you can fight city hall or that destruction is on the way:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oVUwG0qC9c]

A neighborhood association has raised procedural – and possibly legal – objections to the replacement of the UCLA Faculty Club with a Hotel/Conference Center which at latest word is to have over 280 rooms. Two letters from the association have been obtained by the Emeriti Committee. The first is a short, 2-page letter reproduced below. The second is a 14-page letter with much more detail. Both the short letter – which is hard to reproduce clearly as an image – and the longer one are available as a single pdf file at:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BzVLYPK7QI_4N2Q0ZDRiYzMtZDRhMy00YWRkLTlkNjYtNjkyZWQ1YTVjYzY5&hl=en

The “CEQA” review to which both letters refer is a requirement of the California Environmental Quality Act. The University’s position is that it is exempt from CEQA. However, the letters point to Regental policy to follow CEQA requirements. Information about CEQA is available at http://ceres.ca.gov/ceqa/

At the same time that neighborhood concerns are being raised, the UCLA Faculty Welfare Committee has made proposals concerning environmental aspects of the project. Its views are reflected in the letter reproduced beneath the neighborhood association letter.

UCLA Faculty Welfare Committee letter:

February 3, 2011

To: Sam Morabito

Administrative Vice Chancellor

From: Shane White

Faculty Welfare Committee, Chair

Re: Green Transportation Policies for the proposed UCLA Conference Center

Thank you for your excellent presentation to the Faculty Welfare Committee on January 11 about the proposed UCLA Conference Center. We strongly agree with your goal of making the Conference Center as environmentally responsible as possible. We also appreciate your openness to new ideas about parking and transportation options that will contribute to this goal.

In response to your request to the Faculty Welfare Committee to make specific proposals about green parking and transportation policies for the Conference Center, we would like to make the following suggestions.

GREEN TRANSPORTATION POLICIES FOR THE CONFERENCE CENTER

We would like planners for the Conference Center to consider these four policies:

1. Room card keys could serve as transit passes during conferences, rather like BruinGO. Free transit during the conferences should reduce the number of cars that visitors bring to the Conference Center. This green option should appeal both to conference organizers and to attendees.

2. You mentioned valet parking at the Conference Center. UCLA should explore the policy of having only valet parking for conference guests, or making valet parking cheaper than self-parking in the underground spaces at the conference center. The valets could park the cars in Structure 2, which would greatly reduce the need to build expensive underground spaces beneath the Conference Center.

3. If the valet parking station is at the south end of the Conference Center, near the existing parking kiosk at the Westholme entrance, cars could be parked in Structure 2 without traveling on Charles Young Drive or driving across the sidewalk on Charles Young Drive.

4. Conference Center guests who strongly prefer to self-park under the building could be offered this option at a higher price than valet parking.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CONFERENCE CENTER’S PARKING STRUCTURE

We would like to learn more about the cost of the Conference Center parking spaces and who would pay for them. As proposed, the Conference Center will have 263 parking spaces on two underground levels, paid for by the UCLA Parking Service. We have heard one estimate that, because of the difficult site, this underground parking will cost about $60,000 per space. If the Conference Center parking spaces do not earn enough revenue to pay for their cost, the Parking Service will presumably have to increase campus parking fees to finance the deficit.

Because of the high cost of these spaces, we would appreciate the answers to these questions:

1. How much will the proposed 263-space, two-level underground parking structure cost?

2. If only one underground level of parking were built, how many parking spaces would it contain?

3. What would the Conference Center parking structure cost if it had only one underground level? We would like to use this information to estimate the cost per space for one underground level, and the cost per space added by the second underground level.

4. Would eliminating the second underground level of parking reduce the construction time for the project? If so, by how many weeks?

5. Who would be eligible to buy a permit to park in the Conference Center parking structure, and what would they pay for the permits? For example, how many permits would be used by those who work in Murphy Hall? How many permits would be used by those who will work in the Conference Center?

6. How many cars per day would use a two-level Conference Center parking structure? Would all these cars have to cross the sidewalk on Charles Young Drive to access the structure?

7. How much would the Conference Center guests pay to use the underground parking structure? How much would they pay to park in Structure 2?

8. How would the Conference Center parking structure affect the annual costs and revenues of the UCLA Parking Service? Could the Conference Center parking structure affect the price of permits for faculty members who park in other structures?

9. Will the Conference Center budget pay the Parking Service to replace the parking spaces that will be lost in Lot A? If so, how much?

10. How much will the Parking Service borrow to finance the cost of the Conference Center parking structure?

Cc: Norman Abrams, Acting Chancellor Emeritus

Richard L. Weiss, President, Faculty Center Board of Governors

Ann Karagozian, Chair, Academic Senate

Lawrence Kruger, Chair, University Emeriti & Pre-Retirement Relations Committee

Jaime Balboa, Chief Administrative Officer, Academic Senate

Dottie Ayer, Assistant to Chief Administrative Officer, Academic Senate

Brandie Henderson, Policy Analyst, Academic Senate

Note: As you read the item below, note that the hotel project still will require considerable bond financing. See the bold italics.

UCLA gets $100-million donation: Half of the gift from Meyer Luskin and his wife, Renee, will go to the School of Public Affairs…. The rest will go toward building an on-campus hotel and conference center.

Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 26, 2011

A UCLA alumnus who earned a fortune in the animal feed business is donating $100 million to the Westwood campus for its school of public affairs and the controversial construction of an on-campus hotel and conference center, officials plan to announce Wednesday. The gift from Meyer Luskin and his wife, Renee, is the second largest ever to UCLA. It is topped only by entertainment industry mogul David Geffen’s $200-million donation to UCLA’s medical school in 2002. Half of the Luskin donation will go to UCLA’s School of Public Affairs, where it will support graduate student financial aid, and teaching and research in such fields as public policy, urban planning and social welfare. The school will be renamed in honor of the couple.

The other half of the gift will help build a 282-room conference center and faculty club that is intended to replace the existing campus faculty center if opposition does not alter or stop the project.

Meyer Luskin, 85, president and chairman of Scope Industries, a Santa Monica-based firm that recycles bakery waste into an ingredient in animal feed, said he could think of no better use for his money than to support a university.

“Education is the fountain of a good life,” said Luskin, who commuted from Boyle Heights to UCLA as a scholarship student in the 1940s. “If you want to do the best for somebody, give them a good education.”

Public policy studies do not receive enough funding, Luskin said, especially compared with the sciences. “More money should go into teaching people the techniques of helping each other and living together and figuring out how society works best,” he said. “The School of Public Affairs will do that.”

…Even before the donation was announced, plans to demolish the faculty club had triggered debate. Critics say the much larger replacement complex is a waste of money and risky investment during the UC system’s current budget crisis. But if the project goes forward, they said, the conference center should be built elsewhere on campus without demolishing a beloved building. On Monday night, about 120 people, including retired professors who use the club for social events, attended a meeting at the facility and heard critics urge UC administrators to drop or change the proposal. …About $40 million of the Luskins’ donation will go toward construction of the center and $10 million to an endowment for programming and other costs there, UCLA officials said. The remaining $120 million of construction costs will be financed by bonds that are expected to be repaid through rental and room revenue, according to the plan. Construction is scheduled to begin in the spring 2012 and be completed in late 2014.

…Meyer and Renee Luskin, who live in Brentwood and have three children and four grandchildren, both received undergraduate degrees from UCLA, he in economics in 1949 and she in sociology in 1953. Meyer Luskin, who also earned a master’s in business administration at Stanford University, worked as an investment counselor before he was hired at Scope in 1961. The firm, which last year had revenue of $110 million and employs 250 people at plants around the country, sells animal feed products for poultry and dairy farms, said Luskin, who is now its majority shareholder. It previously also owned cosmetology schools but sold them in 2004.

Full article at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucla-gift-20110126,0,6822484.story

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOjTNuuEVw]

PS: If you’ve seen the film from which this video comes, you know that the cheery song is followed by a raid by the sheriff because the show is in fact bankrupt.

There have been a couple of earlier posts on this blog about the fate of the UCLA Faculty Center. The most recent is at http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2010/11/presentation-available-on-replacement.html In the background is the fact that the Faculty Club has been losing money and requires costly capital maintenance.

[If you have trouble when you click on the URL above, just go back to Nov. 29, 2010 on this blog for the entry.]

At this point, it appears that the decision to demolish the existing building and replace it with what is called a “residential conference center” seems to be a fait accompli. Those who have been briefed on the new structure describe it as a luxury hotel with 270 rooms (the number changes) renting at luxury rates. At a recent meeting of the Emeriti Committee, rates as high as $350/night were mentioned. An upscale restaurant is apparently in the mix.

However, the word “hotel” is apparently not to be used, although that is what the project seems to be. No business plan has been made public regarding financing of the project or its subsequent operation. (The only statement on that score is that in the current economic slump, you can get good deals on construction costs.) There is no information about the relation to a commercial operator. There is no information about the financial risk to the campus if the facility turns out to be a white elephant and does not make money. An “advisory group” consisting of administrators, faculty, and deans of various schools is being created, to be chaired by Norm Abrams.

“Information” about the project is tentatively slated to go to the Regents in January. It is unclear whether the “information” involves making a decision at the Regental level or just a description. Construction starts in fall 2012 with completion slated for fall 2014.

In the interim, what happens to the Faculty Club? The initial discussion involved vague references to food trucks and an inflatable tent. The idea apparently has been abandoned and, instead, the idea now is a location in Ackerman. How viable the Faculty Club would be in such a temporary location is unclear. After the facility is constructed, the Faculty Club would apparently get “free” space in it, although it would reportedly share a kitchen with the restaurant. What kinds of costs that would entail are unknown.

Finally, there is a rumor that the construction project would be overseen by a high administrative official who would retire and then be recalled. Such arrangements – which news media tend to view as “double dipping” on the (underfunded) pension plan – have proved controversial in the past. For those that don’t recall the brouhaha over the recall of the UC-Berkeley police chief, you can start with:

http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-04-25/bay-area/17145161_1_retirement-plan-uc-berkeley-police-department-police-chief-victoria-harrison

and then Google your way to other references. What arrangements would be made in this case, if the rumor is true, are also unknown.

In short:

Earlier posts discussed the plan to replace the current UCLA Faculty Center building with a larger convention/hotel type facility. A meeting with Sam Morabito was held in the Faculty Center on Oct. 20 – which yours truly could not attend – but it was videoed and put on the Faculty Center website. Since the existence of the Faculty Club is in peril (although it is eventually supposed to be incorporated into the new building), I have captured the video from the live-stream it preserved it in four parts. That way, the video will be preserved – and whatever promises are made about it are preserved – even if it is not maintained on the Faculty Club website. (Video-Yahoo has a time duration limit, hence the four parts.)

By the way, a lot of underground (and therefore very expensive) parking is to be built under the new facility. An interesting question is whether the full marginal cost of that additional parking will be absorbed by the new facility. If not, some of the cost will inevitably shift on to everyone else’s parking fees.

Note that there is an annoying hum on the video throughout, that some of the audio – particularly in part 4 – is not clear, and that the video does not start at the beginning of the presentation and was cut off before it ended.

A slide show that apparently went along with the Morabito presentation is available at:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BzVLYPK7QI_4NzgzMzA5M2EtNTQ5Zi00ZDcxLWFmN2ItMTU3YzkyZGRjMGVh&hl=en&authkey=CPeykbAC

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4 (end)