Big Money for UCLA from Chicken Feed? Hotel Project Will Still Require Big Bond Issue

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

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.