UCLA joins Dream team at Playa Vista location
University to provide numerous services for model community
By Anne Mai
Daily Bruin Contributor
Playa Vista is presently one of the largest undeveloped areas in
a major urban center. But this is all expected to change as soon as
the entertainment giant Dreamworks SKG moves in.
The Playa Vista master plan calls for 13,085 residential units,
5 million square feet of office and studio space, 600,000 square
feet of retail space, 750 hotel rooms, more than 500,000 square
feet of educational, civic, cultural and public uses, and a boat
basin.
With all the planning and the promise of success, UCLA officials
have been eager to get involved in the project.
Dreamworks, which will be located on a largely undeveloped patch
of land in between the airport and Venice Beach, specializes in
developing and promoting new entertainment technology. The company
was formed in 1995 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and
David Geffen.
UCLA’s role in this venture will be at Dreamwork’s studio at
Playa Vista – a development billed as a futuristic model community.
There, the university will play a major role in the development’s
heath care and education.
"This partnership represents a wonderful opportunity for UCLA –
itself a pillar of the community – to share its rich educational
resources and contribute in myriad ways to the community,"
Chancellor Charles Young said in a prepared statement.
The university will be developing the community’s health care
system, which will incorporate medical education, health care
service and technology.
"(Playa Vista will be) a model of community-wide health care,"
said Michael McCoy, chief information officer of UCLA’s medical
center.
Led by the department of internal medicine, UCLA Medical Center
plans to develop a futuristic health care system through the
construction of UCLA-based programs.
Designed to promote individual health awareness through
education, the Wellness Program will use a variety of learning
tools. This includes interactive media health education, childhood
preventive health measures, stress reduction, diet improvement and
physical conditioning.
The goal of the program will be to help patients take better
care of their own health, McCoy said.
"Educating people about health care is the key to health care in
the future," McCoy said.
The UCLA Health Network Care Program will include a Playa
Vista-based medical clinic that will provide basic primary
care.
The UCLA MedNet program will provide tele-medicine consultation
services which would link patients in Playa Vista directly with
subspecialists from UCLA’s medical faculty. The program will also
enable patients to have tele-visits or video conferences from their
homes or workplace.
McCoy estimated that the costs of the MedNet program should be
relatively inexpensive.
"We’re going to build, maintain and operate a telecommunications
infrastructure at Playa Vista unmatched by anything in existence in
the world," said Charles Lee, chairman and chief executive officer
of GTE in a released statement.
"Everybody will be climbing all over each other to provide this
service," McCoy said. Although he admitted that it will take at
least a decade to implement these programs into the community,
McCoy hoped that they will soon extend to the Los Angeles
community.
"We have to offer a value to the community. UCLA is the main
(health care) provider for Los Angeles and we will continue to do
that. (We need to) learn how to get (those) services for everyone
that we serve," McCoy said.
UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies will
also be working with the Los Angeles Unified School District to
plan and design an elementary school at Playa Vista. The school
will serve as a model for introducing technology into the classroom
and as a laboratory for the development of new and effective
classroom materials.
"Our interests (are) in a physical setting, where together we
could look at how we could integrate education and technology,"
said Toby Inlender, assistant dean of education and
development.
The program will investigate teaching methods, school
development and new curriculums, Inlender said.
UCLA is also establishing a child care program for the Playa
Vista community.
UCLA also hopes to be involved in further collaborations
involving multimedia research, education and training, explained
Assistant Vice-Chancellor Paula Lutomirski.
"This is an exciting new venture, based on the notion that
resource-sharing can produce fruitful and beneficial results. UCLA
is honored to be among the participants, and anticipates the
collaboration will result in nothing less than the blossoming of
innovation," Young said.Comments to
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