The Luskin Center
relies in the first year on a cushion of surplus revenue from the UCLA Lake
Arrowhead Conference Center and the UCLA Guest House – both of which run
healthy surpluses. …
…"It’s disingenuous
in the sense that this is a project that's supposed to take care of
itself," said Daniel J.B. Mitchell, professor emeritus at the UCLA
Anderson School of Management and School of Public Affairs, who has written
about conference center developments on the UCLA Faculty Association blog.
Steven A. Olsen, UCLA
vice chancellor of finance, budget and capital programs, said having the three
facilities work together as one business unit actually strengthens their
financial security overall. "This is like all
of our other auxiliary enterprises. We pull together business plans, we do due
diligence and we have very conservative projections on demand," he said.
"We feel this will be an ongoing concern." (Note from Yours
Truly: We can agree on that! We will
indeed be concerned on an ongoing basis!
More seriously, an earlier post on this blog outlined a revised,
scaled-down plan that would be less risky and address another campus issue –
the future viability of the Faculty Center.
See http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2012/03/there-could-be-grand-bargain-on.html
for details.)
But unlike private
hotels, the Luskin Center wouldn't be open to the public at large for hotel
stays. As a nonprofit entity with tax-exempt financing, the Luskin Center would
be limited to guests with a UCLA affiliation, including university conferences,
parent events, visits by prospective students and more.
"There is a risk
that maybe the occupancy won't be what you think, or it's going to turn out to
be more costly to operate this than you expect, and then this thing becomes a
drain, and in some way or another, something has to be taxed," Mitchell
said.
Local hotel owners
also are concerned. Unlike privately owned hotels, the university conference
center would be exempt from transient occupancy, property and parking taxes. In
a December 2011 letter, Bob Amano, executive director of the Hotel Association
of Los Angeles, said the Luskin Center would pose unfair competition. "The hotels aren't against building new
hotels, it's just the playing field they are proposing to operate this
hotel," Amano said in an interview…
Laura Lake,
co-president of the community business alliance Save Westwood Village, said her
organization would rather see a stand-alone conference center without a hotel. "The
key question with this hotel is, is there really the demand for bona fide
academic meetings? Or is this going to be party central for alumni, parents and
Bruin sports fans?" Lake said. …
Olsen said UCLA
doesn't compete with local hotels…
You can read the full report at http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/questions-linger-regents-consider-ucla-conference-center-plan-15448
The question is whether at the upcoming
Regents meeting the proposed hotel discussion will have room for an alternative
view. Or will the argument have to be carried out elsewhere?
Update: Michael Meranze spotted the California Watch article in the Huffington Post. It's hard to imagine the Regents are not aware of this matter. An earlier post on this blog noted a related recent article on the hotel in the LA Business Journal.
The Huffington Post version is at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/23/ucla-hotel-to-be-consider_n_1375387.html
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