As UCLA’s new Research Park enters its initial environmental review process, a project draft released by the university relayed considerable details about the adaptive reuse project’s’s efforts and ambitions. The document prepared by T&B Planning outlines the campus’ effects on the surrounding environment and its achievement of sustainability goals. 

UCLA first acquired Los Angeles’s Westside Pavilion shopping mall in 2024, as previously reported by AN. Flad will serve as the campus’s architects. OJB was later tapped to helm landscape operations. Dubbed “the hive” by the school, the project plans to transform the former shopping mecca into a major research center into the fields of immunology and quantum engineering. 

The campus involves an East and West building bisected by Westwood Boulevard, where both buildings are interconnected by a pedestrian walkway

Most renovations entail interior modifications to seismic-resistant infrastructure. This includes the retrofitting of mechanical systems as well as the improvement of steel framing points and welded beam-to-column connections. The subterranean parking lot will be repurposed into usable floor space. 

Plans for changes to the campus’s current interior are largely limited. The west building will undergo recladding and reglazing.

Sustainability efforts are set on achieving a LEED BD+C Gold rating. Rooftop parking across the Research Park East and West buildings will also be eliminated to make room for solar panels with future potential for landscaped amenity areas. They also plan to install stormwater collection tanks for both respective buildings in addition to the 131,600 gallon tank that already resides in the East building, with stormwater efforts being put toward irrigation of onsite gardens and landscaping. 

Of the UCLA affiliates planning to move into the campus the ones named have been California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy (CIII) and the UCLA Quantum Innovation Hub (QIH), with space allocated to the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) and non-UCLA partners. 

This ambitious project to overhaul the entire 700,000 square foot shopping pavilion is planned to be completed over five phases across the next nine years. The final project component will be constructed between 2031 to 2034 and completed at some point in 2035. 

The university said in a release in December that some of their facilities may be “eye-wateringly pricey.” Already, $500 million dollars has been invested into the project by the state of California during its conception and at least $150 million has been raised in recent donations to fund the project. 

UCLA students and faculty can anticipate the Research Park East to open its new lobby, alongside the UCLA Quantum Innovation hub as the first tenant, in late 2027.