Beverly Hills is synonymous with high-end shopping, glamorous mansions, boutique hotels and general luxury. High-density housing isn’t something anyone would associate with the city. And yet, a 19-story project could soon rise on its famed shopping street, Rodeo Drive.
Courtesy of CARA Architecture
A rendering of a 19-story project at 145 S. Rodeo Drive
It isn’t alone: At least 13 projects ranging in height from eight stories to 20 have been proposed throughout the city. The projects as proposed would contain more than 1,300 units in a city that, according to state data, has about 10,300 multifamily units.
The new developments have been proposed under the statewide builder’s remedy rule, which requires cities that haven’t met their state-mandated housing goals to evaluate projects with drastically reduced approval requirements.
Residents are pushing back, but the city has to balance their interests and its own with the state’s increasingly close watch on localities that try to stymie new housing production amid a historic shortage.
“Beverly Hills has been the most difficult jurisdiction in terms of trying to stonewall these projects, to put up any and every roadblock to be as creative as a municipal city attorney [or] planner could possibly be, to invent any reason under the sun why these projects shouldn't be able to move forward,” said Dave Rand, an attorney at Rand Paster & Nelson representing five builder’s remedy projects in Beverly Hills.
One way Beverly Hills is navigating the minefield is with a deal, similar to one that Santa Monica struck in 2023 over its builder’s remedy projects, that would allow the city to offer developers a streamlined approval process in exchange for downsizing their projects.
It could get these projects, many of which are “of a size that many consider to be out of scale with existing development patterns,” as a staff report put it, down to a scale that is more in step with what is in the city while also meeting state requirements around these projects and adding housing stock.
The Beverly Hills City Council directed its staff to develop an ordinance that would create a ministerial, or nondiscretionary, approval process for builder’s remedy projects that are revised to meet its criteria, including having a roughly seven- or eight-story height cap.
The city Planning Commission is meeting on March 27 to review and give feedback on the concept, after which an ordinance would be drafted based on the commission’s input. If it passes the commission, the ordinance would move to the city council and could be implemented if the council approves it, a city representative said.
The streamlined approval process and its accompanying height restrictions might mitigate some of the worst problems that Southwest Beverly Hills Homeowners Association President Ken Goldman sees coming out of these projects.
Goldman looks at the heights of the builder's remedy projects, five of which are 19 stories or taller, and sees a downsize to seven or eight stories as a much preferable option.
But what he is really worried about is parking, which might not be improved by this downsizing solution.
“We managed through permanent parking and other measures over the years to protect the residential quality of life in our southwest area, and this is a real threat to that quality of life,” Goldman said, speaking especially of the three projects on Linden Drive, Rodeo Drive and Camden Drive that fall within his association’s bounds.
A rendering by Ottinger Architects of a 12-story project proposed for 346 N. Maple Drive.
Goldman pointed to a project that proposes more than 100 residential units, a hotel and a restaurant but fewer than 200 parking spaces and said he is worried about traffic from hotel and restaurant employees, residents and hotel guests.
“Where are these people going to park?” Goldman asked. “They're not all going to use the subway, right? You'll pardon the expression, but that's BS. They're just not.”
Project applicants don’t have to take the city up on its streamlining offer. Builder’s remedy projects are submitted in the window in which the city’s housing element was out of compliance with the state. Because they have a certain amount of affordable housing, they don’t have to adhere to the rules that other development projects in the city would normally have to follow.
But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for project applicants, and getting the application submitted hasn’t meant a quick approval process.
As difficult as project owners and their attorneys may find Beverly Hills, the city is ultimately somewhat kneecapped in its ability to stop the projects entirely. It has narrowed the playing field, though, determining that of the 16 applications for builder’s remedy projects it received before its housing element was approved by the state, three didn’t make the cut.
Two projects at 8800 and 8820 Wilshire Blvd. didn’t qualify for builder’s remedy “because they do not meet certain criteria required under state law,” and the Beverly Hills City Council deemed another application for 140 S. Camden Drive incomplete, meaning its viability had lapsed, a city representative told Bisnow via email.
The city counts 13 active applications. However, the developers of at least the rejected project on Camden have filed a lawsuit about the rejection, according to the Beverly Hills Courier.
After the lessons of Santa Monica and La Cañada Flintridge, applicants are fighting and winning the right to build their projects, albeit, in some cases, downsized versions of them.
Rand also represented WS Communities, which submitted 14 projects in Santa Monica and ultimately reached an agreement with the city to resubmit and downsize its projects in 2023.
Rand said the projects are basically in the second stage of a three-stage battle to get their builder’s remedy projects built. Stage 1 was to get the city to deem the applications complete and process them, a battle Rand said was won by builder’s remedy applicants.
Now, the fight is over the California Environmental Quality Act and whether these projects have to go through it.
The city website for these projects says they aren’t exempt from CEQA review, which can be a long and costly process that many on the development side have said is often weaponized to slow down projects and rack up costs. Rand said there is a way around that using a new state law that, in some cases, allows developers to challenge cities’ denials of CEQA exemptions for certain projects.
“Round 1 went to the applicants,” Rand said. “Now we're in Round 2. We'll see how we do.”
