We have noted in previous posts that progress on the UCLA
Grand Hotel seemed leisurely whenever yours truly dropped by with his trusty
cell phone camera. However, there is now
a big hole at the work site for the Grand Hotel where once Parking Structure #6
stood as you can see from the photos taken last Thursday. Many parking spaces were removed by the
demolition. A small number will be built
under the Grand Hotel for use only by
the Grand Hotel’s guests, not by general campus parkers. (The Hotel will have fewer spaces relative to
the number of rooms being built than similar commercial hotels on the rationale
that guests will arrive in taxis, buses, bicycles, rickshaws, or whatever, but
not by ordinary cars.) Faithful blog
readers will recall that an analysis by the campus Faculty Welfare committee
back in 2012 indicated that the per-space reimbursement to the parking
authority for the space losses due to the Grand Hotel was well below either
replacement cost or what had been charged to earlier projects. You can find that report at http://issuu.com/danieljbmitchell/docs/fwc6-12-12minutes-packet. [pdf
format]
UC parking rules of 2002 make it clear that parking
authorities on campuses are in effect stand-alone entities supported by fee
revenue. The campus parking services are
not supposed to subsidize other activities beyond basic parking and
transportation. In part these rules were
adopted formally because UCLA – alone among the campuses - began charging its
parking service ground rent for the land its structures occupied and diverting
the revenue. That practice is now
forbidden. You can find these rules at http://issuu.com/danieljbmitchell/docs/parking-principles2002. [pdf format] Note
that every dollar that the Grand Hotel project didn’t pay to the parking
service is a dollar that eventually will be reflected in campus parking rates. Keep that in mind if you go by the work site
for the Grand Hotel and look into the hole.
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