The consultant's report for the hotel/conference center proposed to replace the Faculty Center was premised on 276 rooms. Other numbers of rooms in that range have been reported. Most of us are not in the hotel business and don't have a sense of scale. So how big is that?The LA Business Journal regularly prints tables showing larger businesses in different sectors. The May 2 issue had a listing of LA County hotels so we can look up hotels in the Westwood area. According to that listing, the Hotel Palomar at 10740 Wilshire Blvd. - walking distance to Westwood Village - had 264 rooms. It was built in 2008 and has average daily room rates in the range of $201-$250. The W Hotel at 930 Hilgard Ave. in Westwood has 258 rooms. It was re-built in 2000 and has average daily rates of $250-$300. The Hotel Angelino at 170 N. Church Lane (intersection of Sunset Blvd. and I-405) has 209 rooms. Date built is not given in the listing but yours truly remembers being there when the hotel had a different name in the 1970s. It has changed hands and been renovated since then. Average daily rates there are $151-$200.
"But why am I telling you all of this?," as Garbo once said. The bottom line is that a hotel/conference center of the type originally proposed to replace the Faculty Center is bigger than local area hotels.
Good post, Dan. It's one of many pieces of information that suggests a way out of this dispute that would both save face for the administration and allay most of the substantive concerns: the Faculty Center could be replaced by a hotel and conference center, but a smaller and more modest one than the luxurious behemoth now planned.
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