The reincarnation of a Mecca of retail in Los Angeles as a troking UCLA research center has received a major boost from the billionaire philanthropist from Dr. Gary Michelson and his wife, Alya, who will give $ 120 million to increase the project.
Michelson, a surgeon and inventor of the spine, said that money will help launch California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, which aims to create revolutionary discoveries that prevent and heal diseases, including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's disease.
The institute will be a tenant in the UCLA research park, which is under construction in the old WestSide pavilion. The interior shopping center two kilometers south of the University of Pico and Westwood Boulevards was an icon of the 1980s popular with buyers and filmmakers before falling into disgrace. Most of its stores have closed their doors by 2019.
The shopping center was converted to offices when the UC Regent I bought for $ 700 million in January To create the research park. In addition to the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, it will house the UCLA center for quantum sciences and engineering, as well as other science and medicine programs.
By buying the old shopping center, the UCLA has saved years of work to build such an installation on its campus, which is the smallest of the nine UC undergraduate campuses and has very little room for growth.
A view of the Court of the UCLA research center now under construction in the old WestSide Pavilion shopping center.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“This building would have made the last property available on the UCLA campus,” said Michelson, “and it would have been extraordinarily expensive to build there. As an immobilier, it was only an extraordinary opportunity.”
The Immunology Institute had been planned for years, while a large -scale research park was something “we always dreamed of having … But we have always admitted that we could never find a good that it was close to the campus. We had somehow abandoned the idea many years ago – and he came to life, “said the former UCLA Chancellor Block, who was instrumental in the purchase of the old Pavilion West pavilion.
A previous plan to build the Institute on the campus called to demolish a parking lot, to dig a hole deep enough to replace the parking lot and erect a new building on the top, said Block.
The gift, through the Michelson medical research foundationdesignates $ 100 million to establish two research entities within the Institute, each funded with $ 50 million; One will focus on the rapid development of vaccines and the other on the exploitation of the microbiome of the body to advance human health. Research on the microbiome will be carried out in collaboration with the new UCLA Goodman-Luskin Microbiome CenterPlacing it among the largest microbiome research companies in the world, the foundation said.
The Foundation also finances an allocation of $ 20 million to provide research subsidies to young scientists using new processes to advance research on immunotherapy, human immunology and the discovery of vaccines.
The Institute will have laboratories of different sizes intended to serve biotechnology researchers who can start with small teams that can become larger laboratories if they find success.
“We are going to create a whole ecosystem of biotechnological startups and they will stay here” and attract other players in the neighborhood, said Michelson. “We are going to build a whole biotechnology ecosystem throughout Westwood.”
He plans 5,000 people, including 500 researchers, working at the Institute. Governor Gavin Newsom estimated in January that it would take more than three years to fully transform the 700,000 square feet complex, but Michelson hopes to have a large part of the Immunology Institute operating in half of that time, he said. At 360,000 square feet, the institute will be the main tenant of the research park.
Multiplex cinema with 12 screens from the old shopping center can be converted into conference rooms or performance spaces offering programming through arts, human sciences, science and social sciences, said the Chancellor's office.
An interior view of the UCLA research center now under construction in the old WestSide Pavilion shopping center.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The gift is the largest unique donation of Michelsons in 30 years of philanthropy which includes $ 50 million to build Michelson Hall at the University of Southern California, which houses the Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience. Michelson's name will not be attached to the new UCLA complex, he said, because other philanthropists-perhaps the one who gives more than him-may want recognition.
“The gift will change countless lives here and around the world,” said the acting chancellor of the UCLA, Darnell Hunt.
The Institute will operate as a non-profit medical research organization funded by a public-private partnership and governed by an independent council which includes UCLA representatives A Document UC Regents. The Institute will pay the UCLA 7.5% of net income generated by the sale of new drugs and other inventions that its scientists create, according to the document.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said that the project “has the potential to fundamentally change results for health in the world and to create good jobs in Los Angeles”.
The purchase of the old WestSide pavilion marked the third major acquisition of the public university system in Los Angeles in less than two years.
Seeking to extend its footprint, UCLA announced in June 2023 that it had Acquired the Art Deco style confidence building In downtown Los Angeles and renamed it UCLA in the city center.
Nine months earlier, the school spent $ 80 million to buy two other major properties belonging to the Marymount California University, a small Catholic university that was closed last year. THE Purchase included The 24.5 -acre campus from Marymount in Rancho Palos Verdes and an 11 acres residential site in San Pedro nearby.
