UCLA Will Transform Dead Westside Mall Into Major Science Innovation Center (latimes.com) 23
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Los Angeles Times: The former Westside Pavilion, a long shuttered indoor mall, will be transformed into a UCLA biomedical research center aimed at tackling such towering challenges as curing cancer and preventing global pandemics, officials announced Wednesday. The sprawling three-story structure will be known as the UCLA Research Park and will house two multidisciplinary centers focusing on immunology and immunotherapy as well as quantum science and engineering. Establishment of the public-private research center is a coup for Southern California that "will cement California's global, economic, scientific and technical dominance into the 22nd century and beyond," said Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The former owners of the mall, Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. and Macerich, said Wednesday that they sold the property to the Regents of the University of California for $700 million. By purchasing the former shopping center, UCLA saved several years of potential toil to build such a facility on campus. UCLA is the most-applied-to university in the nation, but its Westwood home is among the smallest of the nine UC undergraduate campuses, leaving it limited room for growth. The former mall sits on prime real estate in the heart of the Westside at Pico Boulevard and Overland Avenue, about two miles from the UCLA campus. The mall was owned by commercial developers who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to dramatically remake the old shopping center into an office complex intended to appeal to technology firms, which signed some of the biggest office leases in L.A.'s Silicon Beach before the pandemic.
Google agreed to become the sole tenant and began paying rent last year yet never moved in. The interior is mostly unfinished, but is ready for UCLA to build out to its specifications in a process Newsom said would take about 40 months. The UCLA Research Park "will serve as a state of the art hub of research and innovation that will bring together academics, corporate partners, government agencies and startups to explore new areas of inquiry and achieve breakthroughs that serve the common good," UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said. In addition to flexible work areas, the former mall's 12-screen multiplex movie theater may be converted into lecture halls or performance spaces offering programming across the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences, the chancellor's office said. One tenant of the research park will be the new California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy.
The former owners of the mall, Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. and Macerich, said Wednesday that they sold the property to the Regents of the University of California for $700 million. By purchasing the former shopping center, UCLA saved several years of potential toil to build such a facility on campus. UCLA is the most-applied-to university in the nation, but its Westwood home is among the smallest of the nine UC undergraduate campuses, leaving it limited room for growth. The former mall sits on prime real estate in the heart of the Westside at Pico Boulevard and Overland Avenue, about two miles from the UCLA campus. The mall was owned by commercial developers who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to dramatically remake the old shopping center into an office complex intended to appeal to technology firms, which signed some of the biggest office leases in L.A.'s Silicon Beach before the pandemic.
Google agreed to become the sole tenant and began paying rent last year yet never moved in. The interior is mostly unfinished, but is ready for UCLA to build out to its specifications in a process Newsom said would take about 40 months. The UCLA Research Park "will serve as a state of the art hub of research and innovation that will bring together academics, corporate partners, government agencies and startups to explore new areas of inquiry and achieve breakthroughs that serve the common good," UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said. In addition to flexible work areas, the former mall's 12-screen multiplex movie theater may be converted into lecture halls or performance spaces offering programming across the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences, the chancellor's office said. One tenant of the research park will be the new California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy.
CA dead malls (Score:1)
Re:CA dead malls (Score:4, Interesting)
Malls are dying everywhere - not just in California. The killer is the world wide web.
Re: (Score:1)
That, and the fact that the wealth has been accumulating at the top. GDP is high but since wealth trickles up and not down, people's available spending money continues to decrease and the number of homeless is rising. People who don't have money to waste don't shop for shit they don't need. RIP Spencers
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Malls are dying everywhere - not just in California. The killer is the world wide web.
Its not just the US, over this side of the pond old people are bemoaning the "death of the high street".
The same people who started shopping at industrial parks at the edge of town because it was cheaper decades before online shopping became a thing.
However more than the ease and convenience of online shopping, the death of commercial districts are largely due to insane commercial rents due to greedy land lords, who are selling the land to developers for overpriced apartments (also welching out on the
Re: CA dead malls (Score:2)
Is it? I stopped going to malls because they stopped having shops I want to shop at in them. (arcades and hobby shops, for example) The story I heard was greed over how much the mall wanted from the shops for rent, not lack of foot traffic.
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I wouldn't be surprised if greed on the part of mall owners played a part as well.
Obviously this is only anecdotal, but - I had to go to a particular local mall several years ago - this was pre-Covid. The promenade seemed pretty deserted. It was nothing like the bustling place I remembered from a couple decades back.
why does sound like an B movie plot? (Score:3)
biomedical research center at an old mall just wait for something bad to happen.
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Bad things have already happened. It's California.
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You don't even know the half of it. This mall is haunted, and there's multiple interdimensional portals opening into it. Get ready for Resident Evil/Half Life/Bioshock IRL.
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Two words: "Reaper Man"
How much more American can this get (Score:2)
a long shuttered indoor mall, will be transformed into a UCLA biomedical research center
A zombie research center in a creepy disused mall. This is worthy of a movie.
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For real. See my post above.
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They have to skimp and save now, since they have to route much more money into travel expenses to send their athletic teams to New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan, and Ohio instead of the Bay Area, the mid-Willamette valley in Oregon, Seattle, Eastern Washington State (Pullman), Arizona (Phoenix / Tempe, Tuscon), Salt Lake City, or Boulder.
I guess buying a distressed mall and turning it into a medical research facility is one way to do that...
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Note that UCLA Athletics is self-funded.
No money will be "diverted" to take these new ridiculously long trips, the travel $$ will come from the massively larger B10 TV payout.
Go Bruins!
Public money bailing out real estate developers (Score:2)
God, You Critics Have Never been to UCLA (Score:4, Informative)
Orange Julius (Score:3)
Free Fallin' (Score:2)