Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t the university tear down its current faculty center and invest $120 million dollars to build a brand new center? Even better, why don’t they add on a 300-room hotel and conference center attachment?
$120 million ““ any takers? According to university administrators, the time to act on this proposal is now.
A new center is essential to the university’s intellectual core, administrators told faculty in a meeting last week. It will be a place for visiting faculty from other universities to come share their ideas in an open space. It will put UCLA on the map.
This board, as well as the 60,000 annual freshman applicants and millions of alumni across the globe, believes UCLA already is on any and every map, with or without a new faculty center.
Our guess at why the university actually wants to do this: profit.
We say this because no other explanation makes sense.
For one thing, UCLA faculty are perfectly content with their current faculty center. Many say they have been left out of the process of conceptualizing the new one. A former UC regent even called the plan disappointing and cautioned the university against overbuilding.
At 295,000 square feet, the new building would be 18 times the area of the old one, but the space allotted to UCLA faculty would stay about the same. This building would not benefit UCLA faculty despite administrative claim.
Another administrative argument: Deferred maintenance and roof-repair to the current building, now 50-years-old, would be costly. Better to just tear the whole thing down, administrators say.
Administrators did not respond to this board’s request for an interview about the price of repair.
But we can’t help thinking maintenance to the current building would cost less than the $120 million to rebuild. Far, far less.
For comparison, the full-scale renovation of Rieber dining hall will cost UCLA Housing about $6 million.
To our knowledge, the university has not released estimates of how much money the hotel and conference space would make, but administrators have called the project a “self-supporting enterprise.”
We take this to mean the new center would make back its construction costs, and who’s to say the university wouldn’t continue to rake in money after the debt’s been paid?
We stress again ““ profit.
Our question is: How much profit?
And how can we be sure the project will not run into serious problems? We’d like to be sure that the benefits outweigh costs to students and faculty.
Let’s drop the intellectual mumbo jumbo and have an honest conversation.