Hate to Dredge Up Old History, but let's do it anyway

The Daily Bruin has an article on the reopening of the Faculty Club with some history. Excerpt:

...Instead of relocating the Faculty Club when it fell in need of repair due to age, the university redesigned the building to achieve reconstruction goals – such as roof replacement and outdoor expansion – without sacrificing the treasured landmark, said Susan Santon, associate vice chancellor for capital planning and finance, in an emailed statement. “A holistic planning approach enabled the project team to achieve seismic and infrastructure goals, while preserving the defining features of this unique mid-century modern facility,” Santon said in an emailed statement. “The Faculty Club has a rich history, and renovations were designed to restore the original vision for the club.” ...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2022/08/27/ucla-faculty-club-set-to-fully-reopen-with-preservative-yet-progressive-design.

But that is a very sanitized version of what happened when UCLA came up with a plan to demolish the Club, build a Grand Hotel in its place, and maybe - when the Hotel was finished - designate some space within it as a replacement Faculty Club. Along the way were badly written business plans supposedly justifying the proposal from an incompetent consultant, a phony telephone push-poll of neighborhood residents paid for by the university, an election campaign to vote in Faculty Club board members who would not go along with the plan, and numerous meetings and protests by faculty. Behind the scenes was the retirement ambition of a particular former UCLA executive who came up with the demolition plan. 

Much of the protest activity was centered on this very blog. And the protest campaign succeeded in killing the demolition. So, take heart! Sometimes, the good guys win. The Grand Hotel (Luskin Center) was moved to the center of the campus. The Faculty Club was saved. Eventually, the folks in Murphy Hall got past their hurt feelings and a deal was reached to renovate the Faculty Club.

You can get a sense of this unsanitized history by typing "faculty center" in the search engine for this blog. Sadly, many of the links you will find in the blog postings - which go back to 2010 - are no longer valid. That is the peril of daily blogging and the ever-changing internet.

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