USC to Buy Radisson Hotel Across Street From Campus
USC said Thursday it has agreed to buy the Radisson Hotel across from the campus just south of downtown for $26 million from Pacific West Co.
The university will continue to operate the 240-room high-rise as a full-service hotel, USC officials said. The Figueroa Street hotel has accommodated visitors to the university since it was built in 1974.
“When the hotel came on the market, we thought the way to keep it as a first-class hotel was for us to buy it,” said Phil Chiaramonte, USC’s associate vice president for auxiliary services.
The $100,000-per-room price “is a premium for a hotel asset in this location,” said John Strauss, a real estate advisor in the Los Angeles office of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. He said the price probably reflects USC’s desire to control the site for its many potential hotel or non-hotel uses.
“A recent upgrade of rooms and exterior entry convinced USC trustees of the hotel’s long-term value,” Chiaramonte said.
The sale, which is expected to close Tuesday, includes the 215,000-square-foot hotel and two adjacent buildings. One houses a restaurant, a coffee shop, a ballroom and meeting rooms. The other is a small commercial office building.
Twice in recent years, USC has offered subsidized housing at the hotel to incoming freshmen because of housing shortages on campus. It plans to do the same this fall, a spokesman said.
The purchase follows other acquisitions by USC of neighboring properties that have raised concerns among nearby residents who say the university is trying to expand its campus without making a full public accounting of its plans. They fear that university expansion could force out residents and small merchants.
Sandra McNeil of the Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice, a coalition representing 15 area groups, said the hotel purchase alone does not bother her. “But the fact that this is an incremental step in a bigger picture . . . that’s a concern to us,” she said.
Said Alfred Kildow, a USC spokesman: “We’re going to be here forever, so we do what we think is best for our neighborhood.”
