Only half as grand – and yet big!

From time to time, we report on the “progress” of the UCLA Grand Hotel.  Sometimes, it’s helpful to illustrate just how grand it will be.  According to the official website for the Grand Hotel, it will have 250 rooms and 25,000 square feet of conference space.  So how big is that?  We have in past postings compared it with hotels in the local area.  It’s big!  Below is another comparison.  A developer in Santa Monica is proposing a hotel with 136 rooms at 5^th and Colorado.  The proposal is drawing opposition which you can read about at http://www.smmirror.com/articles/News/Santa-Monica-Churches-Speak-Out-Against-Proposed-Hotel-At-5thColorado/38323 .  But here is a picture of the Santa Monica proposed hotel which is roughly only half the size of the UCLA Grand Hotel – and yet it is pretty darned big.

Meanwhile, as we have noted in earlier posts, the official groundbreaking is scheduled for September 10.  But much breaking of ground is now occurring as you can see below from photos of the site taken earlier today.

Really, the only question remaining is why is the ceremony to be held on campus?  If you want to premier a Grand Hotel, there are much better ways and places to do it: