UCLA has made the largest land acquisition in its history, buying 35 acres in the South Bay from the now-defunct Marymount California University.
In an effort to expand enrollment and ease student crowding issues, UCLA has purchased Marymount California University’s 24.5-acre main campus in Rancho Palos Verdes and an 11-acre residential site known as the Villas, in San Pedro, officials for the public university announced on Tuesday, Sept. 27.
The purchase price for the two properties was $80 million.
Marymount California University, a private Catholic college about 30 miles south of UCLA’s main Westwood campus, operated on the Peninsula for more than 50 years before closing this fall. MCU shuttered after a failed attempt at consolidating with a Catholic college in Florida to ease rising costs and declining enrollment.
An extended timeline for getting regulatory approvals and completing that transaction led both parties to end the agreement earlier this year, and alternative funding ideas weren’t feasible.
The last day for Marymount’s 500 students and 140 employees was Aug. 31.
Former MCU students who wish to transfer to UCLA must apply through the university’s existing process, UCLA spokesman Bill Kisliuk said by email Tuesday. It’s unknown, he added, if UCLA will maintain any of MCU’s employees and administrators because personnel matters are not part of the transaction with Marymount.
The University of La Verne, meanwhile, partnered with MCU in May to take transfers with more ease and match the scholarships those students were receiving at the Peninsula college.
In a message to the university community, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said the move into the South Bay would help strengthen its connection to the greater LA region and deepen the institution’s research and public service impact.
“As demand for our academic offerings continues to grow,” Block said, “this acquisition will allow us to expand student access in line with UC’s 2030 goals.”
The new site site, Block added, may host academic programs on the Peninsula as soon as next year.
The South Bay site will be the university’s third academic campus outside of Westwood.
Besides Westwood, UCLA has campuses in Downtown L.A. and Culver City. The university also more than 200 UCLA Health patient facilities, Kisliuk said, and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering’s Institute for Carbon Management is researching carbon removal technologies at AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles.
The former MCU campus can accommodate nearly 1,000 students, Kisliuk said, and the Villas can house 400. The university is launching a task force made of faculty and administration to determine what type of college the campus would be, what educational programs to put at the site and what its name should be, he said.
As the Rancho Palos Verdes campus will be part of the larger UCLA community, he added, it’s unlikely that any students would spend their entire undergraduate careers there; rather, they would take certain classes at the site, as they would at the other locations.
A team of environmental, structural and geotechnical engineers and other specialists are currently reviewing the properties to determine what remodeling UCLA will need to do on the campus and Villas, Kisliuk said.
There was a lot of interest in the properties when MCU put them on the market earlier this year. A deed restriction on the Villas in San Pedro requires the complex be used for educational purposes until 2028, which may have thwarted bids from non-educational developers.
Proceeds from the sale will create an endowment for a nonprofit foundation that will set up scholarships and grants for Marymount California University students who had to go elsewhere to finish their degrees, MCU president Brian Marcotte said in an earlier interview.
Rancho Palos Verdes City Manager Ara Mihranian said in a written statement Tuesday that he looks forward to building a relationship with UCLA.
“We are excited about the addition of a top public university of such prestige and purpose as UCLA to our community,” Mihranian said. “We look forward to being neighbors, to continuing that tradition of partnership, and to the myriad opportunities this will bring to the city, the Peninsula and the South Bay.”
Marcotte, too, said he is happy about the future of the campus he used to run.
“We are certain UCLA will be an outstanding steward of the campus for the city of Rancho Palos Verdes, San Pedro and the South Bay,” Marcotte said in UCLA’s announcement.
