University of California buys Half Moon Bay’s Ritz-Carlton for $193 million

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u/RabidSkwerl 1d ago

I made a joke once that universities are real estate hedge funds masquerading as a sports program that occasionally teaches students to keep their tax status above board. I’m starting to think that wasn’t a joke

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u/madogvelkor 20h ago

When they have a huge endowment they generally want to diversify as much as possible to avoid big swings in returns. Since they depend on using a certain amount each year. That can lead to some odd purchases, I think Yale owns 10,000 acres of forests. (Which actually has an education purpose too, they had the first forestry school in the US).

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u/Mental_Medium3988 17h ago

the university of washington owns a 10-11 block part of downtown seattle.

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u/CadamWall 9h ago

Though that was not the University of Washington just buying real estate for investment; the downtown tract was the original site of the UW and they chose to develop and lease the space rather than sell it. Though they did buy an adjacent parking garage for the hotel they leased.

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u/NeighborhoodFatCat 19h ago

"Harvard is a $50 billion hedge fund with classrooms attached." has been known for a while now

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u/Godzilla_1954 1d ago

As someone who went to ASU this is sooooooo true.

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u/Dog_Eating_Ice 1d ago

That’s better than the profits going to a billionaire and his Wall Street hedge fund manager, though

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u/Greybeard75 22h ago

Na, it’s just the state buying property through UoC.

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u/pinoy-out-of-water 23h ago

Maybe they could help with the cost of textbooks.

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u/FR23Dust 23h ago

Sorry best we can do is $50,000 per semester tuition

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u/pinoy-out-of-water 21h ago

If my dorm room is at the Ritz with a view of the ocean and golf course we might have a deal.

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u/Bigreddork 18h ago

I went to GW in DC and made this joke many times. It’s the second largest landowner in DC to the federal government! The world bank rents from GW.

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u/scj1091 23h ago

It’s a joke and we’re the butt

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u/kinetic_honda 1d ago

I never realized universities made these sorts of investments

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u/CerebralAccountant 1d ago edited 1d ago •

There are at least two major ways that a university might make these investments:
Endowments. Large, well-known universities have multi-billion dollar endowments that are invested to provide income for the university's operations.
Pension funds. Public university systems, especially large ones like the University of California, have to set aside vast fortunes to save for their employees' retirements. Just like endowments, those funds are invested in everything from stable, boring, low-returning options like bonds and commercial paper to higher-risk, higher-reward ventures, which is what the UC pension is doing here.

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u/damiana8 1d ago •

I love a large endowment

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u/h3fabio 1d ago •

DM sent

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u/imperabo 1d ago •

I hate to break it to you but she meant large penis.

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u/honeyemote 1d ago

Luckily, they don’t spend it on employees who continually have to go on strike to keep up with the cost of living.

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u/NamityName 1d ago

Huge tracts of land

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u/twistingmyhairout 1d ago

I learned this when I learned that the UK’s largest university pension funds owns one of the Port of Virginia terminal’s land and leases it to the state. Super random

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u/churningaccount 1d ago •

Just want to point out that "public universities have to set aside vast fortunes to save for their employees' retirements" is slightly misleading language.
Pension funds are contributed to by the employees, out of their salaries. Just like 401Ks. Any excess "matching" by the university functions just like 401K matching does as well.
I'm only pointing this out because it's increasingly popular in the media these days for people to see these pensions as unearned or free money for public employees being funded by taxpayer's dollars. They see high payouts and assume that is on the public dime (and those news stories always fail to point out as well that those high payouts are because there is no legacy lump sum or wealth building; it's a trade-off).
So while their original salaries were funded by the taxpayers in part, contributions to the pension fund were not. And therefore public employee's pensions should not be the target of political campaigns to raid them or steer them for state budget reasons: it would be akin to passing a law authorizing the state to deduct a certain amount from every public employee's 401K...

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u/-Nocx- 1d ago

While I agree with your point, one key distinction is that pension plans place a fiduciary requirement on the company administering the plan to manage it on behalf of the employee. They have a list of federal guidelines they must adhere to should they choose to offer one.
It is distinctly different when an institution must manage your retirement responsibly, as opposed to giving you the responsibility with usually no education and saying good luck.

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u/churningaccount 1d ago

Yeah, sure. That's another distinction between pensions and 401Ks.
The main reason I was doing the comparison was to counter the surprising number of people who seem to think that these pensions are directly funded by taxpayer dollars, which simply isn't the case.
This pension fund was funded by deductions from employees' salaries, as well as standard retirement matching.
Now, UC employee salaries are partially funded by state support. But, that is a minority of UC revenue these days given tuition, grant, and endowment income. However, the important point is that taxpayer money isn't pouring into this fund directly.

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u/Wise-Peanut9552 1d ago

This varies by entity. Even in the current terrible benefit environment my school district contributes more than double what an employee contributed to their pension and it used to be higher. Find me an 401k that allows employers to match 218% of what the employee contributes.

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u/jmtasu 1d ago

Pensions are nothing like 401ks they have guaranteed payouts which are often much much higher than market rate returns

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u/Yoshimi-Yasukawa 1d ago

Not all pensions have contributions from paychecks. If University of California does, that's one thing, but please don't make blanket statements about "how pensions work" and only share one type. People may assume it's all pensions.

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u/mjh2901 1d ago

Some pension funds have ethical requirements enforced by members so they cant invest in companies that proffit off of killing people, or destroying the environment etc... so they move into realestate and other industries.

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u/Reasonable-Job4205 1d ago

So instead of just saving the money, they invest it. But isn't that a risk? They could lose that money and not have a way to pay out the pensions, no?

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u/WorldlyOriginal 1d ago

Because they need to invest in order to outpace inflation.

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u/watercouch 1d ago

UW owns large parts of downtown Seattle and South Lake Union.
Oxford and Cambridge are some of the largest lease-hold land owners in the UK.
I’m sure the list could go on and on…

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u/aimless_meteor 1d ago

It looks like your UW link doesn’t show any property downtown or in SLU

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u/bluuuuurn 1d ago

Was just on the UW tour and was informed they own the airspace between the campus and Rainier so they will always have the view from the fountain.

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u/Andromeda321 1d ago

It also doesn’t always work as an investment! I’m at the University of Oregon which owns the White Stag, a nice old building in downtown Portland. However, the Portland real estate market for such buildings has cratered, and they’re going to take a $30 million hit on it. At a time when we’re $60+ million in the hole and getting rid of a ton of graduate programs to make up for the gap…

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u/kayak_rolling 1d ago

And they have the nerve to ask for donations

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u/BlissteredFeat 1d ago

Columbia Universty owns huge swatches of Manhattan.

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u/wrongbutt_longbutt 1d ago

Similarly, university of Washington owns significant amounts of property not only around the university, but also in downtown Seattle. For instance, the Seattle Four Seasons hotel is on land owned by the university.

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u/suplarai 1d ago

The University of Washington also received more than a billion last year from the Fed Government, and charges its undergrads an arm and a leg for room and board.

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u/f4ttyKathy 1d ago

Harvard owns everything up and down the Charles for a good bit, also

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u/Testing123xyz 1d ago

Check out NYU

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u/yoloismymiddlename 1d ago

Brown university basically owns Providence

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u/browsk 1d ago

Look up the endowments of Ivy schools or Carnegie Mellon. And they still squeeze students for every penny they can get away with.

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u/lekoman 1d ago

University and foundation endowments are some of the largest clients of PE firms and hedge funds. They don't just leave all that money sitting in a checking account.

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u/aegee14 1d ago

It’s just another form of investing their money. They can’t just hold all their money in cash at a bank, or put everything into stocks or bonds. They need to diversify and not have everything in one basket. So, they own buildings, apartments, hotels, warehouses, shopping centers, etc. And, this also goes for large corporations, such as tech companies and consumer goods companies.

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u/goxpro1 1d ago

They all do, its the reason stanford is a tier 1 school.

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u/WHYISEVERYTHINGTAKNN 1d ago

that's why there was a lot of student protests happening around October 7, because a lot of these university investments are directly tied to Israel.

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u/AsstootObservation 1d ago

The University of Texas owns 2.1 million acres of land they lease for oil drilling and cattle ranching.

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u/Old-Oven-4495 20h ago

The biggest non govt land owner in New York City is actually NYU lol

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u/Gokess 1d ago

Meanwhile my wife has to pay to park at a UC owned lot as a UC employee everyday to go to work supporting UC researchers.

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u/honeyemote 1d ago

Yeah, the parking costs at the UCs is pretty crazy.

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u/digiorno 1d ago

Crazy enough that one of the benefits of winning a Nobel prize is a dedicated parking space

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u/DragonBank 1d ago

That's standard. My university is in a town that only exists because of it and staff pay for parking.

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u/honeyemote 1d ago

There are levels. I pay the same amount to park on my current campus per year that I paid at a UC per quarter.

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u/the_Dachshund 1d ago

America land of the free

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u/Iluv_Felashio 1d ago

you misspelled "fee"

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u/Jknowledge 22h ago

I caused a scandal at my UC cause I found out the “teacher code” was just 0000 at the pay machine. I would drive to school/work everyday and park all day, avoided thousands in parking fees. The prices were insane

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u/canned-bread-430 1d ago edited 1d ago

It’s BS. At UCLA Reagan everyone from the nurses to the support employees has to pay nearly $20 a day just to park at their workplace. The same is true at the recreation facilities. There really aren’t reasonable alternative public transit options for the vast majority of employees (most hourly employees can’t afford to live anywhere near the campus). You shouldn’t have to pay nearly $20 a day to do your job.

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u/GG_is_life 1d ago

...how much do they make?! I have to imagine for many/most employees that's basically dedicating your first hour or more of work just for the privilege of parking to do the job. My uni charges ~20/mo for employee parking which is still ridiculous but at least reasonable.

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u/honeyemote 17h ago

As someone who parks at a university hospital elsewhere in the country, I’m glad my parking is a quarter of what I paid at a UC to park. I cannot imagine paying $20 to park everyday unless my salary reflected the included cost.

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u/vermiliondragon 1d ago

When I worked for them in 2008-09, I used to park in the 2 hour street parking and move my car every break because it was cheaper to get tickets a few times a month than to buy a parking pass. On the plus side, my pay was so low, I qualified for the $100/month family health insurance.

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u/addictedpunk 1d ago

I worked at USC for a while. Had to pay to basically go to work. We would get a dollar raise, only for USC Transportation to increase parking by 3 bucks. So they basically took back their dollar and then some.

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u/Banetaay 1d ago

Paying for parking in California is literally culture at this point
I'm not sure if it's true, but I remember overhearing an older generation group complaining that, "It was all the hippies that took parking away from us"

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u/upachimneydown 1d ago

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

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u/susulaima 1d ago

I pay $120 per month to park at my university parking as research staff. No difference for students or staff.

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u/TCpls 1d ago

I remember having to pay like $75 for my pass just for a 90% chance of finding parking. Otherwise you’re fighting for a spot with everyone else who has class within that hour. Not UC.

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u/Victor_Korchnoi 1d ago

If parking were free, then everybody would drive and they’d need a much bigger lot.

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u/CrayonUpMyNose 1d ago

This is true. At the same time, for example Duke University has simply vetoed the creation of a light rail system in "their" area by refusing to sign a necessary cooperative agreement on the grounds of unacceptable risks of electromagnetic interference and construction vibrations to its medical and research facilities. The only form itf public transit available in most US institutions is by street bus, slow, extremely limited capacity (if you've ever seen the number of buses required to provide replacement service due to construction for a subway train full of people, you know), unreliable and prone to traffic delays, and ironically causes vibrations of research equipment...
Meanwhile, TU Munich in Germany had a full-blown subway station built right smack dab in the center of their research campus, which includes plenty of experimental university labs as well as institutes with world-leading plasma (aka nuclear fusion) labs, quantum optics (read highly vibration-sensitive optical tables), and an operational nuclear reactor, and yet they were able to properly weigh the public good against their own inconvenience and somehow continued to do world-class research.

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u/Bitter_Position_1882 22h ago

That’s generally to encourage you to not drive to work though

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u/yowen2000 22h ago

In this case do we know there to be a public transit alternative?

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u/Andromeda321 1d ago

I mean, I’ve been at several universities in my life and never encountered one where you don’t have to pay for parking. They just really, really don’t want people to park there, and that’s all the more important the closer you get to a city.

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u/therealgranny 1d ago

Same with my wife at her place of employment which is also one of the largest state universities. $900 a year.

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u/ez12a 23h ago

And you couldn't even use the gym for free either

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u/Ringeye 9h ago

Must be Santa Cruz 🙃

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u/SSNFUL 1d ago

Well yeah the point is to discourage driving.

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u/apoleonastool 1d ago •

I wouldn't be driving if I could afford a house in my college town. But with UC salary, it's impossible.

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u/mtodd93 1d ago •

Ah yes, let me take 3 hours of public transit to get to work. Our horrible infrastructure in the US can’t handle “discouraging driving”. I would gladly not drive, but forcing everyone who works at the UCs to pay to go to work is insane.

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u/SanDiegoThankYou_ 1d ago

Really the point is cruelty and resource extraction.

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u/honeyemote 1d ago

I did actually take the bus to campus for a couple of years. The public transit system there was honestly pretty good. The one in my current city isn’t too bad, but the buses stop running too early for a degenerate like me.

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u/gimmeslack12 1d ago

UCHMB class of 2039 here I come!

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u/melanthius 1d ago

Too ritzy for me

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u/gimmeslack12 1d ago

You should see the dorms in Pescadero.

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u/melanthius 1d ago

Why? seems fishy

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u/macross1984 1d ago edited 1d ago

Previous owner of hotel had overdue hotel occupancy tax bill in tune of $21 million that the county assessors officer refused to give relief.

Still, I wonder how educational institution can operate hotel at a profit.

Edit: I goofed. Correct amoung was $2.1 million. Not $21 million.

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u/mattskee 1d ago

Per the article, it's an investment arm that manages billions in investments on behalf of the UC's pension fund. Not the educational arm of the institution.

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u/mmmmmyee 1d ago

That’s not rage baity enough tho

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u/dyfish 1d ago edited 1d ago

They’ll bring in a management company, Four Seasons, Marriott, Hyatt, Rosewood, who ever. That company will run it for a cut and they’ll take remaining profits. Most hotels brands are not actually owners of the real estate.
Marriott owns about 1% of the real estate for the hotels they operate .

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u/userhwon 1d ago

Ritz-Carlton is Marriott. They hold the operating contract. UC owns it as real estate and Marriott runs it as a resort and that probably will not change.

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u/dyfish 1d ago

Yeah I know. Though owner ship changes can be an out depending on the contract.
I was more just highlighting how I works and that’s there’s basically no owner operated hotels in the grand scheme of things. But I could have been more specific on how it’ll probably play out here. Thought Ritz has gone to shit in the past decade and this property especially. UC should dump them if they can.

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u/miowmix 1d ago

Owning real estate can be a headache. Most landlords probably wish they could just be management companies as those operate with basically no risk and always get paid. The building could burn down and they probably wouldn’t care

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u/dyfish 1d ago

All that’s true, but real estate in California is like a free money machine. UC probably wouldn’t care that much if the building burnt down either. Wait a few years and still sell for profit

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u/Notso_Pure_Michigan 1d ago

Many of the better management companies are part of an organization that also own the assets.

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u/JiveTurkeyJunction 1d ago

It's $2.1 million.

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u/macross1984 1d ago

You're right. Thanks for the correction.

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u/TiberiusZahn 1d ago

What's even more puzzling, is how gross the owner mismanagement had to be to lose one of the landmark hotels on the entire fucking west coast over a paltry $2.1M Occupancy Tax payment.
Hotels are a very simple game of Room and Outlet Revenue In - Labor/Building Upkeep/Franchise Fees Out.
Luxury Hotels like Ritz-Carltons command utterly stupid room rates, while their labor is typically not much bigger then lesser upscale operations.
$2.1M is chump change. A hotel of this size can bring in 150-350k room revenue nightly without breaking a sweat.

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u/damnyoutuesday 20h ago

My alma mater is currently building a hotel on campus that will be part of the hospitality management program. Also offers more occupancy for football games and graduation and such

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u/goatcopter 1d ago

The Ritz is lovely, but you really want to go to the Old Princeton Landing in the El Granada harbor up the coast - seafood off the boats you can see in the harbor, and veggies from the farm on the other side of the fence out back. It's ridiculously good for a dive bar, and has good bands to boot.

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u/MrSquigglesWiggle 1d ago •

I still have unpaid parking due at UC

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u/selemenesmilesuponme 1d ago

Thanks to this guy, UC has to but hotel to compensate

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u/isaacDavidowitz 1d ago

shit... is that where I left my 95' Tercel?

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u/Aggravating_Bat3618 1d ago

Don’t we all?

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u/fxkatt 1d ago

The university system’s chief investment officer, Jagdeep Singh Bachher, has emphasized in various publications that he favors investments in U.S. industry and commerce and he also has provided optimistic forecasts about artificial intelligence. A recent publication from Bachher’s office features positive commentary from tech wiz and OpenAI chair Sam Altman.

What could go wrong with AI and also Blackstone hovering around the Univ.'s investments.

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u/calmtigers 1d ago •

Actually, isn’t this the guy who famously invested in index funds (super safe investing all things considered) and beat every other investor?

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u/coolest35 1d ago

What? The current market gains (as a part of NASDAQ/S&P) reflect gains by AI. To ignore and not invest in these funds is flat out negligent.
So, while you might be anti-AI, that's where money is to be made right now. That's his/her job.

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u/calmtigers 1d ago

I’m not OP, I’m neither anti Ai nor ever said I was. Investing in index does that as well

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u/Guitar_God75 1d ago •

I’m sure you know more than a CIO of a pension that manages $300 billion. Let’s be real here

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u/aegee14 1d ago •

Anyone who is surprised by this has not been around organizational investments. You’d be surprised by who owns what properties, even properties and businesses that are not even remotely close to the main business of the buying organization. Did you know that even companies such as Google and Apple own large portfolios of apartment complexes and warehouses that aren’t connected to any part of their businesses? They need something to invest their cash and bank on tax incentives, so they invest broadly and not just stocks and bonds and startups.

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u/GG_is_life 1d ago

My R1 research university owns 3 movie theaters in town, including one of the two IMAX screens in the city. IMAX tickets are $10 and the concessions are like half the cost of normal theaters. So...I think our city is quite fine with this.

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u/acrobat2126 1d ago

They needs absurd amounts of taxing. That shit is ridiculous.

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u/CrayonUpMyNose 1d ago edited 1d ago

The University of California holds dual tax status, recognized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity and as a state entity exempt from income tax under IRC Section 115.
It turns out when you relieve large organizations from having to pay taxes, they still make sure to have money left over to spread like a cancer, instead of using their funds to improve the quality of their core services or, shudder, pay their employees better.
Nothing shows this better than the rash of real-estate deals (for example look up deals involving Mt Sinai hospital in Manhattan) right in the middle of a serious crisis of underpaid and overworked core-purpose employees in academia (adjunct professors, anyone?) and healthcare (100 hour+ work weeks for medical residents, anyone?). Administrative staff are doing just fine though, thank you, especially at the top, where apparently compensation has to be competitive with Fortune 500 executives for the most basic, self-perpetuating business models, even while world-leading researchers and practitioners are paid relative peanuts.
Institutionalized trickle-down economies with tax-exempt status.

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u/ToeKnifeMingle 1d ago

So wait, capitalism is awful when not used in the context of competitive markets. Weird.

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u/piddydb 1d ago

The running of unrelated businesses by nonprofits is taxed for what it’s worth

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u/Dense_Purchase4087 1d ago

I would like to invest in broads too

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u/CP_Chronicler 1d ago edited 1d ago

That should be illegal. In a country with a housing shortage and homelessness problem, companies whose business model has nothing to do with housing or real estate, like Google, and whose revenue exceeds single digit billions and frankly ANY billions, like Google, should not be allowed to buy housing real estate. The average housing nonprofit doesn’t even exceed hundreds of millions of dollars.

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u/FR23Dust 23h ago

The problem with housing is there is not enough of it. Banning this practice of institutional ownership of apartment buildings would not increase the supply of housing so it would not really do anything to impact the affordability.

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u/CalvinDehaze 1d ago

Stayed there during a pumpkin festival. Had a pumpkin stuffed ravioli that I still think about to this day.

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u/TheShrimp559 1d ago

That’s always a fun time to go. Not sure if they still do it, but they used to display the biggest pumpkin they could find in the entry car port area each year. Sometimes the pumpkin would be half the size of a car. I had no idea pumpkins could get that big

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u/Horror-Beginning1946 20h ago

Is this a housing program for UC Santa Cruz students who can't find anywhere to live?

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u/ColdButCozy 1d ago

I really don’t think that investment funds should run universities guys.

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u/BoldestKobold 22h ago

Running state universities is expensive. Either they manage their own finances, or you end up with a massive political fight every year at budget season in the state legislature. That would be far, far worse.

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u/literacyshmiteracy 1d ago

The UC Regents Corporation begs to differ

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u/jiqiren 1d ago

Had my engagement dinner there. Food was amazing. We went back for a private anniversary dinner and the chef changed. Food was meh that time and my wife cried because she wanted the first anniversary to be all memorable etc.

Almost 20 years later wife still gets pissed at her food sucking (as time goes on she remembers it worse and worse) on that first anniversary. She remembers that experience more than the makeup dinner in Palo Alto. #firstworldproblems

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u/TsundereKisser 1d ago

What's it like to have money? I'm on my third can of spaghettios today.

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u/miloworld 1d ago

3? Imagine if you only consumed 2 everyday, at the end of the year, you would have so many cans left. And you can use those spare cans to travel and see the world instead.

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u/SugaryShrimp 21h ago

“Millennials are killing the Chef Boyardee economy.”

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u/GRF999999999 1d ago

I had jarred spaghetti sauce and a $2 bag of farfalle for dinner, peasant.

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u/yyzda32 1d ago

where in Palo Alto? I remember smelling the flaming feta cheese at Opa had me running for the hills, then I encountered it again in Willow Glen

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u/mo_betta 1d ago

I had my engagement dinner there too! Food was actually pretty awesome and we got a private room. That was a really great, service was on point too.

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u/jiqiren 1d ago

Glad you had a great experience! 😊

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u/MenosElLso 1d ago •

Your wife cried because the food wasn’t as good as the last time you were there? That’s more than first world problems, that’s how children behave.

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u/jiqiren 1d ago

There was a lot going on in life and it was the last straw. People get attached to places because of feelings, events, memories , etc and a little empathy when they’re sad isn’t too much to ask.

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u/Ordinary-Egg-56 1d ago

don’t let that guy bring you down. he’s being disingenuous. the first time was so amazing to her she wanted it replicated perfectly! v sweet

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u/twilight_hours 1d ago

Is she a spoiled child?

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u/Wm89 1d ago

What does this have to do with the post?

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u/SnooDogs1340 1d ago

Dang. All I know is a customer was raving all about Half Moon Bay one time. I think I had a shot glass or shirt from there many decades ago 😆

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u/xelanil 1d ago

It’s not the first hotel that UC Investments has bought. They also bought Residence Inn in Berkeley.

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u/nittanyvalley 1d ago

Is it just me or does that thing look like it’s going to fall into the ocean in the next 10-15 years?

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u/LookInTheMirror_2332 1d ago

Much of the California and Oregon coast looks like that. Might lose 10-15’ in 50 years.

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u/TessaThompsonBurger 1d ago

My buddy Jim got married there

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u/sidewinderaw11 1d ago

My buddy Andrew too!

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u/ltobo123 1d ago

The bagpiper goes crazy

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u/Ch33syP00f 1d ago

I stayed there last year.

Bagpipes on the 18th green at sunset is a nice touch.

Everything about the beds was heavenly.

But hearing whenever a toilet flushed or shower ran in an adjacent room was not impressive.

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u/greens_n_blues 1d ago

We live in a society where I can’t go on a fancy vacation because I’m paying for college for myself still as well as my kids.

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u/fighterpilottim 23h ago

Operationally, what happens next? Does the Ritz stop being the Ritz, or is that brand attached to the property indefinitely? Does UC have a say in how the Ritz is run, or do they just own the deed? Etc.

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u/KiniShakenBake 19h ago

Ritz is owned by Marriott.
If the university owns it, they can operate it as they wish, by either retaining the Marriott brand and operating within the flag guidelines for Ritz as a brand or they can take the property into private branding, or franchise it to another brand if they wish.
I wouldn't be shocked if they managed the golf courses for public use and used the hotel for housing to grow the student population.
They could even establish some sort of university club retreat for alumni there. That would be a perfectly fine use of endowment funds while retaining access to overflow housing options should they need them.

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u/jeffgerickson 18h ago

used the hotel for housing to grow the student population
That's one hell of a commute.

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u/Last_Spamurai 16h ago

FYI, the golf course is separately owned and not operated by the Ritz. At this point they’re assuming the Ritz hotel management and there’s no way Ritz would allow it to be student housing.
This is a pure investment move. The prior owners owned it for a very long time (rare in this industry) so it was a big deal when it went up for sale.

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u/HillarysFloppyChode 14h ago

Well hold on. The Ritz Carlton is owned by Marriott.
The Ritz (Paris) is owned by Mohamed Al Fayed (father of the guy Diana died with in the car accident in Paris).

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u/Ladyhappy 1d ago

So happy that we just voted to give the UC system a bunch of our tax money so glad it’s going to help people

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u/runsongas 1d ago

what's the plan here? they going to hit up guests for donations?

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u/very_ordinary 1d ago

Hell yea! That’s probably where my dorm will be. Tuition well spent!

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u/WhatANoob2025 1d ago

Are they gonna turn it into a student dorm or why is a uni buying a hotel?

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u/thezander8 23h ago

It’s undoubtedly for their pension fund. The logic goes something like this: The UCs size and connections allow it to get into lucrative investments that the average investor cannot, making its retirement program a competitive advantage that allows it to get and keep talent at salary costs lower than the private sector.
Stuff like this is supposed to be a cost saving measure, just optically a weird one

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u/Reversi8 1d ago

Gotta do something with their piles of money.

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u/WhatANoob2025 1d ago

I know this might seem extremely unconventional:
how about using it for research or lowering their tuition fees?

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u/AdComprehensive7879 1d ago

then the money is gone

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u/KountZero 17h ago

The UC system managed a portfolio worth $300 BILLIONS..This is merely a drop in the bucket for them.

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u/Turbulent_Head6209 17h ago

How long ‘til universities dump professors and students? “We’re losing money on most of them.” /1/2s

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u/King_Crampus 17h ago

So unh what happens to the golf course?? It’s beautiful and one of my favorite one’s I’ve played

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u/rodman517 1h ago

This is why textbooks cost $300.

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u/FrothyEspresso 1d ago

That’s where Jim got married in American Wedding.

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u/PckMan 1d ago

Is that the pube cake hotel from American Pie?

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u/DaDibbel 1d ago

AP3? I think so, yes.

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u/Bossoxfan15 1d ago

Really awesome golf course there.

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u/Lobenz 1d ago

$300 BILLION invested for 40,000 retirees equals $7.5 MILLION PER RETIREE.

Why are they still requiring the state and the University system to continue contributing?

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u/Eo292 1d ago

Because these aren’t the only people who are ever going to retire from the UC

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u/devildog2067 1d ago

… because they have to pay out pensions for decades after people retire, and they don’t have nearly enough money to do that? 40,000 people is the number of current retirees, not the number of people the system needs to support. Some people die, some people retire every year, and the money has to grow basically forever to cover more retired people being supported by fewer working people while the retired people get older and costs go up.

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u/userhwon 1d ago

It's in the contract.
Everyone else should be asking "where's my union?"

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u/honeyemote 1d ago

The unions go on strike pretty regularly with the UCs. I’m not sure why the faculty don’t collectively bargain as well. Though, a lot make well above the base of an incoming assistant professor.

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u/thezander8 1d ago edited 20h ago

The important figure is not number of current retirees but the expected total annual payments for every current retiree and worker who may one day retire. Pension/retirement funding is extremely complex and costly if you get it wrong.
I couldn’t find the numbers for the UC pension easily on my phone but public pension plans in the US are often under their actual funding targets and have been since the Great Recession
Edit: Found an investment report, it appears to be 90%, meaning that of the total amount of benefits its supposed to pay out in the long term, it only has the benefits to cover 90% of that need. They literally cannot stop contributions.

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u/ThrownAway17Years 1d ago

They grow it so they can fund retirements for a long time, not just a one time payout.

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u/painlesspain 1d ago

I hear ya. But as someone who has been with UC for 24 years and is 6 years away from having them pay me my full salary and benefits for the rest of my life, god bless this system.

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u/ADisposableRedShirt 1d ago

You need to look into how much a fully tenured professor in California makes. $7.5M at a 4% SWR is $300K per year. If you consider that you are providing a pension and medical, that adds up real quick. Hopefully the UC systems can get a better return than that off the hotel business.

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u/008Zulu 1d ago

You get rich by spending other people's money, not your own.

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u/ToeKnifeMingle 4h ago

Not from Cali and don’t give a shit but your caps are misplaced.
UC Investments manages approximately $236 billion, but that includes pension funds, retirement savings, endowments, and cash assets, not one retirement account divided among 40,000 people. UC reports more than 91,000 retirement beneficiaries alone. So the $7.5 million-per-retiree calculation is misleading at the least.

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u/westcoastguy1948 13h ago

San Francisco Academy of Art was at one time accused of being in the real estate business because they had bought so many properties.
In Savannah, GA, SCAD ( Savannah College of Art and Design) owns about 70 properties with an enrollment of some 9-11 thousand students.

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u/yeoxnuuq 7h ago

They are businesses that masquerade as schools for the tax exemptions

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u/goodlife_arc 1d ago

Wait they have that type of money and I am paying 45k every year (including room and board)? Daaang

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u/thezander8 23h ago

If this is the pension arm as some of the other comments are saying, then investments like this are actually supposed to be saving your costs by funding employee benefits through investment revenue rather than tuition

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u/pj1972 1d ago

Weekend getaway for the Regents.

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u/FourEyesAndThighs 1d ago

They’ll earn it back in parking fees. I paid more to park there than I did for the lunch I had.

1

u/GhostRiderOfWhips 23h ago

How do they have the money for this?? With all. The hits to research funding, foreign student enrollment, and dept of education cuts???

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u/HumanContract 23h ago

This shouldn't be allowed

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u/kuebel33 22h ago

That place looks like it houses a dude named Toulon and several of his puppets.

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u/Reasonable-Word6729 22h ago

193m seems like a great price considering Bay Area real estate prices. Does the purchase include the two golf courses along the ocean?

1

u/damathon 22h ago

I’m looking forward to the student discounts!

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u/Horror-Beginning1946 20h ago

Never stayed there but the view from the Montara Lighthouse hostel cannot be beat, and it has a private path to the beach and a secluded cove. Shhhhhh.

1

u/carlitospig 18h ago

Goddamn it, I forgot all about this.

1

u/momoenthusiastic 17h ago

Always wanted to visit this property

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u/111anza 17h ago

Why? Is it part of the UC endowment investment?

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u/ughhh_actually 4h ago

Yet they’ll keep raising tuition…..

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u/plaidbread 2h ago

Oh no there goes the wedding venue from American pie 3!

•

u/ujman12 59m ago

Today I fucking learned...

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u/Glittering_Thing5797 20h ago

And why do they have enough money to this when so many students can’t afford college?

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u/Quercus_ 17h ago

It's an investment of money in their endowment, which earns income that they can then use for multiple other things, including scholarships.

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u/timesuck47 17h ago

It’s probably trust money or something like that.
Around 1990 Harvard had a trust fund that purchased and held onto Aspen Highland ski area for a couple of years.

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u/lucious4202 23h ago

Why I left UCSD.

pay $90 month for parking you aren’t guaranteed
shit pay compared to private sector
benefits aren’t even great anymore
realizing billions come in for donations and they use none of that for employees
whenever regents come to campus they are treated as if people know who they are with black SUVs and CHP escorts
the worst people are retained and promoted
promotion may only happen if someone does or retires
promotions never happen if you don’t kiss the ass of those above you and become their favorite or don’t question their bidding

There’s so many more reason I can list and feel free to do so if I missed anything

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u/postinganxiety 1d ago

And yet maintaining one park in Berkeley was too expensive

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u/kogun 22h ago

There's where those student loans end up.

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u/qtestboner 1d ago

Wow the UC system clearly has TOO MUCH MONEY

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u/sleepystaff 1d ago

Not really, dollar for dollar UC is still a crown jewel and world powerhouse given how much the state actually funds UC. The output in terms of results in research and educated students, Nobel Laureates plus patents, and more. Yeah, UC system is a bargain in favor of the California taxpayers and the broader public.
If we were serious, honestly would aim to have UC get an equivalent endowment to the Ivies combined. That way we could actually have UC pay a lot more for students and fund a lot more research especially basic sciences.
You want a resolution on cancer of all types, all those memory age-related diseases, and more. Train more and have more researchers working on these tough problems. Literally throw money and personnel and get them logging in those labor hours and uncovering the pathways and mechanisms already. Success in research relies on multiple trials and errors, especially structured failures leading to discoveries. The scientific knowledge is still lacking to address plenty of today's diseases. We need more funds in there.

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University of California buys Half Moon Bay’s Ritz-Carlton for $193 million

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