EOS Investors to Upgrade L'Ermitage Beverly Hills for $15M

EOS Investors wants to launch a $15 million renovation of its 116-room L’Ermitage Beverly Hills hotel.

Three years after buying it for $100 million, the New York-based hotel firm has filed plans to revamp the 5-star hotel at 9291 Burton Way, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

Plans call for a new bar and restaurant atop the 48-year-old hotel near Rodeo Drive. The eight-story building and guest rooms would be retained, as would its underground parking garage for 129 cars.

The renovation project, designed by Irvine-based WATG, would alter the exterior of the hotel and add new finishes, and widen its main entrance on Burton Way.

The renovation would require amending entitlements that allow the operation of a hotel within the Beverly Hills R-4 Zone, plus an amendment to the city’s zoning code.

EOS acquired the luxury hotel, then known as Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills, following its federal seizure in 2016 from Jho Low, a Malaysian businessman.

Low was found to have bought the hotel out of $1.7 billion in funds stolen from the nation’s sovereign wealth fund intended for infrastructure projects. The feds took over the hotel after a just-completed, $37 million renovation.

In October 2020, EOS Investors bought the hotel and its 116 suites for $100 million, or $862,000 per room.

Since the L’Ermitage opened in 1975, it has drawn such celebrities as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier, either to spend the night or dine in its fancy French restaurant, according to the Los Angeles Times. Its 3,300-square-foot presidential suite has five balconies, a Steinway grand piano, a formal dining room, dens and a kitchen.

The hotel lies just south of a city-owned lot where West Hollywood Community Housing plans to build a 252-unit senior affordable housing complex at 9268-9298 West 3rd Street.

EOS Investors manages 13 hotels, according to its website, including properties in California, Florida, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. The company also owns the Big Sur Campground & Cabins along the Northern California coast.

In addition, the firm just bought the 221-room Hotel Zoe Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco for $68.5 million, or $310,000 per room.

— Dana Bartholomew