new hotel-conference center

I happened to be looking at a listing of major construction projects in LA County that appeared this week in the LA Business Journal.*  Now we all know that UCLA is proposing to build a 250-room hotel for $162 million.  But in downtown LA, Marriott is building a two-hotel structure – 28 stories high! – for only $172 million.  That’s right; two hotels for a little more than UCLA is getting one.  Of course, they’re not quite as big.  One is 174 rooms and the other is 218 rooms.  But still, you do get 28 stories which would really give…

UCLA Hotel Reservations: Editorial (excerpt) Charles Crumpley, Editor, LA Business Journal,  August 27, 2012 …(M)any businesses are fine with the conference center. It’s the hotel they have reservations about. They fear it’ll bottle up the visitors. Since conference goers will only have to go upstairs to their rooms, they won’t need to walk to a nearby hotel. That means they’ll be far less likely to dine or drink or watch a movie in Westwood. …And the nearby hotels? Well, you can imagine they hate UCLA’s proposed hotel. For one thing, there’ll be plenty of rooms at the inn – 250…

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…

We have noted in past blog posts on the UCLA proposed hotel/conference center that the business plan assumes that the hotel is tax exempt (because it is – and has to be – non-commercial).  One of the anecdotes cited at the July Regents meeting session that approved the hotel financing plan was a campus hotel at Indiana Uuiversity.  (Listen to the link below.)  Above is a screenshot of the webpage for that hotel.  If you go on that webpage and book a room, you will find that the room cost includes TAX. This is the problem.  Many of the uses…

CaliforniaWatchhas a story on the UCLA hotel project that recently passed the Regents.  It notes problems that this blog has pointed out: “(Chancellor) Block noted in his presentation that the hotel and conference center would serve not only academic conference attendees, but also donors, parents and alumni coming to UCLA for activities ‘in furtherance of UCLA’s educational mission.’ But critics have noted that the Internal Revenue Service has treated alumni, for example, as members of the general public, suggesting that the university could be exposed to the unrelated business income tax. According to ‘The Tax Law of Colleges and Universities’…