You might have notice the article in the
LA Times about concrete buildings in LA County that were prone to collapse in a major earthquake. The article included an interactive graphic for selected areas including Westwood. Among the buildings the
LA Times listed was 924 Westwood Blvd., an office building owned by UCLA (the Regents). The image above is a screenshot, not the actual interactive graphic which you can find at
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-earthquake-concrete-20131013-dto,0,1555748.htmlstory. However, here is the text of what is on the graphic including a response by UCLA saying it believes the building is safe:
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924 Westwood Blvd.
Owner: Regents of the University of CA
The
office building, now owned by UCLA, was inspected by city officials
after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, according to documents. The
inspection found that the building was a "poured in place concrete
bldg."
Owner response: A spokesman for UCLA, Steve Ritea, said in an email:
"The
924 Westwood building is a 10-story concrete frame structure with a
unique original design that has positive seismic safety attributes
including its frame redundancy, frame placement and reinforcement
detailing. "Non-ductile" frame buildings noted as vulnerable to
earthquakes do not typically possess these positive seismic attributes. "The
building underwent seismic enhancements in 1990, including the addition
of concrete shear walls at the base of the tower. Documentation of that
work filed with the city is attached here. [Note: If you click on that link, you get an error message. But another link on the page is possibly the correct one:
http://documents.latimes.com/924-westwood-blvd-los-angeles/ Yours truly has asked the
Times for the correct link.]
"UCLA
had leased space in the building prior to our purchase of the building
in 2012. The University is currently working with the structural
engineering firm of Nabih Youssef and Associates, which is designing
fiber-reinforced polymer wrapping of some basement columns for
additional very minor fine tuning of the structural performance of the
building."
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If anyone with engineering expertise has a comment, please use the comment option to provide it.
PS: After the Big One, the UCLA Grand Hotel might get some business from the Palomar and the W in Westwood, since both hotels are on the
LA Times' list. Oops! Forgot! It can't take commercial business.
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