Thursday, 4/24/97 Campus recovering after book festival Event’s
100,000 attendees leave trash, trampled grass
By Mason Stockstill Daily Bruin Contributor If the grass in
Royce Quad seems a little less green these days, it’s not without a
good reason. An estimated 100,000 people walked, stomped, stepped,
jumped, skipped, ran, stood and generally trampled on the grass at
the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last weekend, leaving wide
swaths of turf in a state of utter ruin. But flattened grass is not
the only effect of the book festival’s being held on campus. The
100,000 people who attended the book festival also left behind
enough trash to keep the groundskeeping crews busy for a while,
according to Jack Powazek, director of Facilities Management. "We
spent a week setting up, and now that the event is all torn down,
we have to work to help the grass to recover," Powazek said. While
the pecuniary compensation received by the university was minimal,
UCLA administrators believe the benefits of hosting the festival
tended more toward the area of intangible impressions and public
appearance. "In terms of monetary recompense, UCLA received very
little," said Michael Foraker, director of Housing Administration.
"What we gain predominantly is the prestige of having renowned
authors on campus. "With the value we place on literary endeavors,
being an educational institution, this kind of event goes hand in
hand with our mission as a place of learning," he added. Sales at
the UCLA Store outpaced sales at last year’s event, with a 59
percent higher-than-usual uptake on Saturday and 38 percent more in
sales on Sunday, according to Director of Retail Operations Carol
Anne Smart. These numbers are deceptive, though, since sales on
weekends are usually very low in comparison to weekday sales.
"These sales figures are actually about the same as a typical
weekday," Smart said. But representatives from the Los Angeles
Times, who co-sponsored the event, were elated with the success of
the festival. "The tremendous response was a tribute to the reading
public of Southern California," said Lisa Cleri Reale, festival
co-chair and director of community affairs for Times Mirror. But
public service and image aside, the campus will now need several
weeks to recuperate. The damage incurred by the festival was minor
in terms of the amount of work that will be needed to repair it,
Powazek said. "There were plastic mats in place that helped to
reduce the damage," he said. To nurse the grass back to health,
Facilities Management will mow, water, aerate and overseed the
grass. The grass will then be roped off to keep students from
walking on it. "It should bounce back in a couple of weeks,"
Powazek said. The areas that received the heaviest amount of damage
are not being roped off, because those areas are not going to be
used for other events and they receive less traffic than Royce
Quad. While the grass could be recovering from the festival, it is
instead being prepared for the upcoming fund-raising campaign
kickoff on May 17, where it will again endure the feet of the Los
Angeles community. "It’ll probably be roped off for a few weeks
again after that," Powazek said. LA Times Festival of Books Bruin
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