Proposed UCLA conference center too costly, ignores tax code
and zoning
Laura Lake, co-president of Save Westwood Village, 1-7-13
The University of
California is a public trust, a public treasure, an institution of world
renown, not because it operates campus hotels, but because of its faculty and
student body. Broken down by square footage, the 250-room, $162 million Luskin
Conference and Guest Center is 91.5 percent hotel and a mere 8.5 percent
conference meeting space. At $648,000 per hotel room, it is a Taj Mahal for a
campus cut to the bone. When it opens, it will charge $224 a night. That is why
in March the UC Board of Regents asked for alternatives that would be less
costly and less risky. But a July 3 letter from Meyer and Renee Luskin to the
Regents derailed all alternatives by insisting on Lot 6. Save Westwood Village
v. Regents of the University of California and Meyer and Renee Luskin, real
parties in interest, is about inadequate fire protection in Westwood; UCLA’s
failure to impartially analyze less costly alternatives to this project;
violation of city zoning; and UCLA’s refusal to pay local and federal tax on
its many hotels...
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