Sneak Preview

Later this morning at the UC Regents meeting, there will be a public comments period.  There may be oral testimony by persons opposed to the latest version of the UCLA hotel/conference center project.

Below you can find a link to the written testimony of "Save Westwood Village," a group of neighbors and local business & hotel owners.  Although the group may have interests regarding this project different from those of the faculty, it will be necessary for any Academic Senate review of this project to respond to the objections raised.  The faculty interest essentially is that the project not end up running at a loss on a stand-alone basis (not blended with other campus facilities) that would have to be picked up by the campus one way or another.  It would have been preferable if the powers-that-be had made the information to be presented to the Regents available on a timely basis to outside scrutiny.  As prior blog posts have noted, the basic information was certainly ready in early February 2012.

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Note: The statement above refers to a PKF report.  PKF is a consulting company that produced a dubious report on the original proposal.  Below you will find a link to the PKF report on the revised version.  Note that the profit figures reported do not include the cost of debt service.  Also, the transient occupancy projected - apart from the issue of forecast accuracy or inaccuracy - raises some potential legal/tax issues that need addressing.

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