LA Business Journal Editorial on the UCLA Hotel: Shrink It!

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 in all…

What really galls the innkeepers is that UCLA, thanks to its tax-exempt status, wouldn’t have to charge guests the city’s 14 percent occupancy tax. That would make the UCLA hotel an unfair competitor, they claim…

Opponents claim they’ve done some research and now have some real questions about whether the hotel could claim tax-exempt status. The UCLA hotel should have to charge occupancy and sales taxes, they believe. But that presumably would need to be determined in court, which implies delays and legal expenses for the regents and for UCLA.  And that brings up another question. If the hotel is not a tax-exempt enterprise, would that mean taxable – not tax-free – status for the $112 million or so in bonds sold to build the complex?

Where does the UCLA faculty come down? Well, many obviously would love to have a conference center right in the center of campus. …But some are skeptical that the complex, especially the hotel, will be profitable. And what happens if it is unable to pay its own way? Will money that the faculty depends on for the school’s educational mission have to be diverted to pay for the hotel?

…UCLA is a public trust. It needs to be a good neighbor and keep peace with nearby businesses, its community generally and with the taxpaying public at large (not to mention donors and potential donors).  The solution seems simple. Build a grand conference center. Scale back the hotel.

Full editorial at http://www.labusinessjournal.com/news/2012/aug/27/ucla-hotel-reservations/

The editorial is what we have been saying all along.  Is anyone in Murphy or on the Regents prepared to listen?