new hotel-conference center

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Hotel/Conference Center Lesson from Our Berkeley Colleagues: What happens when university business plans don’t pan out?

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today pointed me to the article below about the UC-Berkeley stadium that appeared in the Wall St. Journal: (excerpt) As state legislators shrink its appropriations, it’s hard enough for the University of California-Berkeley to maintain the nation’s highest academic ranking among public colleges.  But there now looms a financial threat from another, somewhat unlikely quarter: the university’s football program. Until now, the years-old effort to renovate the school’s football stadium, which sits on an earthquake fault line, never raised many alarms. Although its $321 million price tag would make it one of the most expensive renovations in college…

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Audios of Regents Meetings of March 27-29, 2012

Byuclafaculty

Meeting of the Regents of the University of California: March 27-29, 2012 Prior posts have included excerpts from the Regents meetings dealing with the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center and the sale by UCLA of the Hannah Carter Japanese Garden.  Below you will find complete recordings of the three days of the Regent meeting with the exception of the third day for which a defective audio file was received. Tuesday March 27, 2012: Day 1 3:00 pm Committee on Health Services (includes public comment) Wednesday, March 28, 2012: Day 2 8:30 am Committee of the Whole (public comment) Includes comments on…

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Listen to Audio of Regents Meeting on UCLA Hotel/Conference Center

Byuclafaculty

The discussion of the proposed UCLA Hotel/Conference Center occurred in two segments of the March 28, 2012 UC Regents meeting.  During the morning public comment period, there was testimony on the hotel by outside interest groups.  In the afternoon at the Committee on Buildings and Grounds, there was a full hearing on the proposal.  As readers of this blog will know, the result was an embarrassment for UCLA.  Committee members asked questions and were dissatisfied with the responses received.  They were unwilling to endorse the proposal and would have sent it without endorsement to the full Board of Regents the…

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More Bad Hotel PR for UCLA

Byuclafaculty

From LA Business Journal: UCLA Expansion Fails to Make Grade With Regents: Board seeks more details on plan for hotel-conference center. Jacquelyn Ryan, April 9, 2012 UCLA’s controversial plan to build a hotel and conference center on its Westwood campus has sustained another setback.  The University of California Board of Regents postponed a decision on the $162 million project at its March 28 meeting after citing concerns about the project’s viability.  The board questioned whether the area would support a new hotel and suggested that the university consider acquiring and repositioning an existing nearby hotel. Specifically, it sought more details…

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Chancellor at Staff Town Hall on Hotel, Climate Survey, Pensions, Donor-Community Relations

Byuclafaculty

Chancellor Block, Vice Chancellor Steve Olson, and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Campus Human Resources Lubbe Levin participated in a staff Town Hall on April 4. The session was videoed but the video works poorly and the commercial service utilized includes ads.  Below is a link to the audio of the session which works much better. There were no exhibits at the session so nothing is lost in the audio-only format. There were specific questions, some in-person/some submitted in advance, on the proposed hotel/conference center, the upcoming (systemwide) campus climate survey, pensions, and donor-community relations.  Links just to those questions are…

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More Westside Hotels Coming Along

Byuclafaculty

We have already reported on a new hotel planned in Santa Monica on Wilshire and 7th Street with 285 rooms. Two more hotels are planned in Santa Monica at 5th Street and Colorado.  One would have 131 rooms and the other would have 138 rooms.  Seems like a lot of potential competition is opening up for staying on the Westside in other than the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center, now in some difficulty regarding justification at the Regents.  See prior blog posts on the hotel issue.  The two new Santa Monica hotel projects are described athttp://www01.smgov.net/cityclerk/council/agendas/2012/20120410/2012%200410%208-B.htmandhttp://www01.smgov.net/cityclerk/council/agendas/2012/20120410/2012%200410%208-A.htmThe earlier Wilshire and 7th hotel…

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Time to Learn from Students?

Byuclafaculty

On the one hand, from spin central, there is: Faculty committee backs plan for conference and guest center  An Academic Senate committee has expressed support for UCLA’s proposal to build a conference and guest center, calling the project a potentially valuable enhancement to the campus. In its review of the proposed operating plan, the Council on Planning and Budget determined that the financing model for the project is sound and that UCLA could benefit from additional conference space and affordable guest rooms. Vice Chancellor Steve Olsen, UCLA’s chief financial officer, was appreciative of the committee’s review…   Full press release at…

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Inconsistent Construction?

Byuclafaculty

When UCLA presented its plan for the Weyburn Terrace Grad Student Housing in 2009, it included a $2,193,000 parking buyout.  You can find a link to the plan below.  The parking buyout is reported in footnote “e” of Attachment 1.  The business plan for the hotel/conference center deviates from the parking buyout policy.  Undoubtedly, when UCLA  comes back to the Regents with answers to questions raised at the Regents meeting last week, it will want to explain the deviation. (Or maybe it won’t; we will see.) Open publication – Free publishing – More parking

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No Parking? (and no decision at the Regents)

Byuclafaculty

There are in fact UCLA policies about reimbursing the parking authority for the costs of parking replacement when capital projects displace existing parking.  Contrary assertions were made at the Regents meeting on the hotel/conference center. Below you will find a link to the official parking policy: Open publication – Free publishing – More parking Yours truly is in transit at the moment but I am told that the hotel matter was deferred today to the next meeting of the Regents after the embarrassing questions that occurred at the Regents yesterday. If UCLA is willing to rethink this project as working…

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UCLA History: Ralph Bunche

Byuclafaculty

On the left is the graduation photo of Ralph Bunche, the famed African American diplomat after whom Bunche Hall is named.  Bunche was an undergraduate at the old Vermont Avenue campus of UCLA. Someone with Bunche’s mediation and diplomatic skills might be needed today by UCLA to find a solution to the embarrassing hotel problem it created yesterday at the Regents.  See yesterday’s two posts on that matter.  Too bad he’s not around to help. ===Yours truly will be on an airplane today and unable to report on the Regents session, including what they do with the hotel.  The UCLA…