Beny Alagem’s $2B Beverly Hills project gets go-ahead

Complex will include 300 condos and a hotel, but no affordable housing

Renderings of One Beverly Hills and Beny Alagem. (One Beverly Hills, Getty)
Renderings of One Beverly Hills and Beny Alagem. (DBOX for Alagem Capital, Getty)

Beverly Hills is getting a facelift. But instead of collagen, this one will get injected with concrete and steel.

Beny Alagem’s $2 billion development that will include 300 condos and a hotel was approved in a 4-1 vote last week by the Beverly Hills City Council. The decision follows weeks of deliberation on the 1.4 million-square-foot project, which will have no affordable housing.

The Beverly Hills Courier first reported on the Council vote.

Alagem’s vision for a massive development at that location has been in the planning stages for years.

One Beverly Hills, which will rise on Wilshire Boulevard, will have two towers with a total of 303 condos and a separate 42-room hotel. There will be an additional 37 units at the hotel, but details on those were not known. The towers will be 32 stories and 28 stories, and the hotel will rise 11 stories. The property will include eight acres of green space.

“This has been a very long journey and the outcome is very exciting,” Alagem said in a statement on Monday. “We appreciate the hard work of the City Council, [Planning Commission] and staff. Their analysis and input improved One Beverly Hills. We look forward to getting started.”

Alagem and partner Cain International bought the development project in 2018 from China-based Dalian Wanda Group for an estimated $420 million.

Alagem unveiled his new plans for One Beverly Hills last year. To make way for the new complex, existing portions of Alagem’s Beverly Hilton Hotel will be demolished, along with a gas station. Alagem’s Waldorf Astoria hotel will remain intact.

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Tight zoning and land use restrictions sharply limit new mixed-use developments in Beverly Hills. Most of the big real estate projects and deals in recent years have come in the form of spec home mansions — some of which have faced severe pushback as well. Celebrity home sales have also reached into the $100 million range.

For Alagem’s proposal, the lone Councilman opposed to the project was John Mirisch. The former Beverly Hills mayor cited its lack of affordable housing as his reason.

“We are left with a project that is elitist, exclusive and exclusionary,” he said at the June 8 meeting before the measure was approved. “Without affordable housing, the project has turned into a “castle-fortress of exclusion.”

Under a development agreement with the city, Alagem’s group will pay a $100 million public benefit payment over the next eight years, in exchange for not including any affordable housing in the project.

Other council members said the fee could go toward building affordable housing elsewhere in the city.

Beverly Hills will also receive revenue from a 5 percent municipal surcharge on luxury hotel rooms at the new Wilshire hotel and eventually at the Beverly Hilton. It will also collect fees from sales of residential units.

The Council must now hold a final approval vote on two smaller portions of the development. Once final approval is given, Alagem can start work on the project in the fall.