Luskin Center construction to demolish Parking Structure 6, relocate drivers

Bill Dandridge will be relocated to a new parking structure next month, after more than 15 years of parking in the same building, for both work and to attend basketball games at Pauley Pavilion.

The chief financial officer at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies is one of more than 500 parking permit holders who have been assigned to different structures this summer in preparation for the demolition of Parking Structure 6 near Ackerman Turnaround.

Demolition of Parking Structure 6 will begin in early July. Construction crews will remove the structure in preparation for building the Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference and Guest Center, which will be built in Parking Structure 6’s current location.

Once completed, the conference center will include 25,000 square feet of meeting space, 250 guest rooms and a campus catering kitchen.

Dandridge said he was reassigned to Structure 2, which is about the same distance from his workplace as Structure 6, but farther from Pauley Pavilion.

He said he prefers his current spot because it allows him to take a more direct route to campus.

Demolition of Structure 6 will be completed by late fall, and construction of the conference center will finish in 2016, said Steve Ritea, a university spokesman.

UCLA Transportation does not expect a decrease in revenue after the closure because permit and pay station users will use alternate structures, Ritea said.

Structure 6 is primarily used by staff, Ritea said. It consists of 100 spaces for daily users and about 650 spaces for permit holders, he added. UCLA Parking Services reassigned about 540 permit holders from Structure 6 to different spaces in nearby structures, often closer than before to their workplaces, Ritea said.

There will not be a shortage in parking when drivers are relocated to their new spaces because the drivers will be reassigned to some of the 1,200 spaces that are not currently being used, Ritea added.

Staff members who work in the structure said they hope demolition will not inconvenience their commutes.

“Structure 6 is a convenient (parking) structure for me and for people visiting Pauley Pavilion from the south,” said Judy Ismaili, associate director of executive communication at the UCLA Alumni Association who works in the James West Alumni Center, next to Structure 6. She has parked in the structure since 2002.

Ismaili said she has not been assigned a new spot yet, and that she hopes the spot will be accessible from the southern end of campus, which is closer to her house.

Underneath the Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference and Guest Center, there will be a parking lot with 125 spaces, primarily for conference center employees and guests, Ritea said. Many guests at the center will likely use shuttles, taxis or other forms of public transportation rather than parking, so more spaces would be unnecessary, he added.

As part of the project, Ackerman Turnaround will be renovated to improve traffic flow for the shuttles and buses guests are expected to use, reducing the center’s effect on local traffic. The date that construction will begin on Ackerman Turnaround is unknown, he said.

Parking spaces below the conference center will mitigate problems created by the removal of parking spaces in Structure 6, said Norman Abrams, professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Law and former interim chancellor of UCLA. Abrams served on a faculty advisory committee to plan the conference center.

Some drivers said they are worried that the three-year construction project will inconvenience students and staff walking through the Ackerman Turnaround area.

“There’s been so much construction in the center of campus lately,” Ismaili said. “It seems like it will never end.”