After the Regents Building and Grounds Committee rubber
stamped the hotel (except for bathrooms and loading docks!), it went on to
consider a proposal for a new Teaching and Learning Center for the Health
Sciences. The presentation was by Steve
Olsen and Dean Eugene Washington of the Med School. In this case, we came close to a repeat of
the March Regents meeting on the UCLA hotel (which the Regents at that time
refused to endorse). Part of the Regents’
complaint back in March was that apart with defects in the hotel, they were
more generally being presented with a fait
accompli with yes or no decisions.
They wanted options early in the process and not just on the hotel but
for other projects in the future.
In the case of the medical teaching center, the Regents had problems
with both the plan – vague though it was – and the lack of real alternative
options. The teaching center was said to
cost in the neighborhood of $120 million.
Unlike the hotel, however, the sum was to be raised by grants, not
projected revenue streams so at least there was no flaky business plan. It was said that the teaching center was
needed to ensure accreditation of UCLA’s med school. An earlier accreditation review was said to
have complained that teaching was taking place in scattered buildings. But let’s put aside the implausibility of
UCLA’s med school losing its accreditation because of teaching in multiple
buildings and move on - since no one on the Regents committee questioned that
notion. None of them must have read in
the proposal the following description of the med school which would appear to
suggest that un-accrediting of the School was, well, unlikely:
“The David Geffen
School of Medicine is internationally recognized as a leader in medical education,
research, and patient care. It currently has more than 2,000 full-time faculty
members, 1,300 residents, more than 750 medical students, and almost 400 Ph.D.
candidates. The medical education
program prepares its graduates for distinguished careers in clinical practice,
teaching, and public service through a multidisciplinary and collaborative
approach to problem solving…”
Anyway, the new facility is proposed to be located on the
corner of Tiverton and LeConte, just west of the botanical garden. UCLA was requesting approval of $3.96 million
to develop more detailed plans. You can
find the proposal at:
The facility would contain 120,000 gross square feet but only
68,500 square feet would be usable. That
gap caught the eye of various Regents.
First, it seemed awfully specific for a project which as yet is
represented as not having even conceptual architectural plans. Second, it seemed inefficient to lose that
much space in a plan. Third, when you
divide the usable square feet by the projected cost, you get a cost per square
foot which, as one Regent pointed out, was well beyond the cost of Class A
space in Manhattan.
So what to do? The
committee was facing the possibility of doing what they did in March and not
endorsing the planning money. Various
Regents said they wanted to see alternative plans including options for
physical downsizing (smaller facility) and lower costs before allocating funds. They wanted the option of simply buying a
commercial building to be considered.
They didn’t take seriously the official proposal’s statement that three alternatives
were already considered:
“1) a new building; 2)
renovation of existing facilities; and 3) a no project alternative.”
In the end, however, the Regents went ahead on the word of
Patrick Lenz, VP for Budget and Capital Projects of UCOP, that true
alternatives would be prepared by UCLA for the November meeting.
As with the hotel, the larger problem is not any specific
project but the fact that the Regents approve vast sums for construction
without any real ability to follow up or even independently ascertain what
alternatives there might be or whether the projects live up to the promises
made once constructed.
You can hear this segment of the Regents Sept. 11 meeting at
the links below:
Part 1
Part 2
No comments:
Post a Comment