As the largest institutional landowners on the Westside,  the Veteran’s Administration (VA) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are, at 388 and 419 acres respectively, the most influential players when it comes to real estate development, traffic congestion, and the provision of open space in this part of town. To that end, the Westside Urban Forum invited prominent panelists from both institutions for its monthly event. Also in attendance was County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose jurisdiction includes the VA and UCLA (even though both properties are technically exempt from local zoning controls).

The panel was supposed to discuss long-range planning efforts, but most of the official statements sounded like a defense of the status quo. Ronald B. Norby, Network Director for the VA Desert Pacific Healthcare Network, vowed to uphold the VA’s core institutional mission and put himself on record as opposing any changes in land use, either for commercial development or  ”anything that is not veteran-focused” (read: a public park).

Yaroslavsky, fielding hostile comments from local residents about insufficient public access to the VA grounds, defended current policy, explaining that “the pastoral nature of the campus is very therapeutic…healing time with the environment is crucial to patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.” When Brentwood resident Michael Cohn complained about the lack of a continuous boulevard or bicycle lanes through the property, Norby responded, “the last thing that relatives want when they’re visiting their loved one [in the cemetary] is to be disrupted by a noisy car or bicycle riding by.”

Chancellor Gene Block of UCLA was there mainly to trumpet the university’s virtues. He briefly outlined plans for more residential infill on campus, mainly dormitory and affordable housing for junior faculty. Asked about the university’s responsibility to help revitalize the struggling Westwood commercial district, Block compared it to Telegraph Avenue, the main commercial corridor near UC Berkeley, and declared that Westwood’s downtown looked pretty good by comparison!

Transportation planners in the audience wondered whether the planned Westside subway extension was influencing either institution’s long-range planning considerations. Yaroslavsky intervened with a pointed remark on 7 members of  the MTA Commission who are allegedly colluding on a “heist” of Measure R funds for the Gold Line Extension to Montclair in the San Gabriel Valley, at the expense of the Wilshire subway line. This internal feud over countywide transit funding is “about to become very public,” he warned. Meanwhile, Block focused on the university’s success in congestion management, noting that its commuter vans and ridershare programs have kept the number of daily vehicle trips to the campus steady since 1995, even as the university’s size has significantly expanded. Currently, 50% of trips involve carpooling, well above the citywide average.