UCLA Buys Land in Westchester for 90 Faculty Homes
July 20, 1989 | SPENCER
S. HSU | Los Angeles Times
UCLA has bought a
controversial, 57-acre site on the Westchester Bluffs for $15.25 million to
build subsidized faculty housing. The 90-home development will be UCLA's fourth
and largest housing project. Since 1986, in an effort to help its faculty
members cope with the fierce housing prices in Los Angeles, the university has
built two condominium projects in Westwood totaling 52 units, and a 58-unit
townhouse complex in Beverly Glen, just north of campus. The Westchester site,
located on the hills between Loyola Marymount University and the San Diego
Freeway, has been the subject of dispute since 1986, when Howard Hughes Realty
Inc. first sought city permission to build 205 homes on two separate tracts
along the bluffs...
UCLA to Sell Part of
Faculty Subdivision: Real estate: Westchester houses will be offered to the
public. They were built to lure professors, but few have bought there.
March 11, 1994 | RALPH
FRAMMOLINO | LA Times
UCLA officials
announced Thursday they will allow the public to buy up to two dozen homes in a
largely vacant Westchester subdivision originally built exclusively for
professors, conceding it was the only way to keep from losing money on the
project. The university built the $42-million subdivision of 86 homes--called
The Bluffs for its hilltop views of the ocean--to help recruit senior faculty
members who might be tempted to turn down job offers because they could not
afford a home in Southern California. Conceived during the 1980s real estate
boom, the idea was for the school to offer the three- to five-bedroom homes,
located about 30 minutes from the Westwood campus, to incoming UCLA faculty at
prices as much as 30% below market value. A 1987 housing survey suggested that
nearly 60% of faculty recruits would buy such houses and that the mid-$400,000
to high-$600,000 prices would be within the reach of 129 new professors over
three years. But by the time the project was completed last fall, UCLA couldn't
find a single buyer. Housing prices had taken a 30% nose-dive, wiping out any
bargain appeal, and state budget woes forced the university to curtail its
hiring. School officials hoped to spur interest by dropping prices an average
of $35,000 on each home and offering flooring and landscaping upgrades. But
only seven faculty members have purchased homes, said Brad Erickson, UCLA's
associate director of real estate. Two others have signed leases with options
to buy--one family that was displaced by last fall's Malibu fire and another displaced
by the Northridge earthquake.
At that rate, it would
take UCLA more than three years to sell off all of the homes to its
faculty--not fast enough to repay the First Interstate Bank construction loan
and recover all the project's costs, Erickson said… After selling off the first two dozen,
Erickson said UCLA will re-examine its future faculty recruiting plans and may
make more homes available to the public. "The world has changed and we did
not foresee the extent the world would change, in terms of local real estate prices
and what has happened to the state and university," Erickson said…
Of course, one can always argue that "this time it is different." Alternatively, one can take seriously the objections raised about the business plan and about tax issues.
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