Behind the Bulgari Hotel clash in Benedict Canyon
What lobbying controversy says about LA development
There’s little question the 33-acre Bulgari Hotel — if it gets built in Benedict Canyon — will be spectacular, with a 10,000-square-foot spa, top-shelf Italian and sushi restaurants, a private cinema and 18 guest bungalows.
The idea is to create a world-class hotel secluded in the Santa Monica Mountains, minutes from Rodeo Drive; the plans even include a funicular, to help well-heeled guests navigate the steep terrain.
“We have a one-of-a-kind site that will be a legacy for L.A. … long past my lifespan,” its developer, Gary Safady, told financial news website Benzinga.
While supporters call it a discreet luxury project that will mesh with the area’s natural environment and raise property values, opponents see a catastrophe that will bring congestion nightmares, destroy habitat and raise the risk of wildfires.
The years-long battle has included slick marketing and mayoral campaign statements. Along with some of the region’s most powerful labor and business groups, it’s also brought in an unusual amount of celebrity involvement, with voices in favor that include Mark Wahlberg, Lance Bass and Gene Simmons. Opponents range from Dr. Phil to Doors guitarist Robby Krieger.
The fight recently turned from the buzz of celebrity to talk of public malfeasance, as newly elected L.A. Council member Katy Yaroslavsky asserted that — along with environmental concerns — the project also reeked of political corruption. The critique by the daughter-in-law of local political legend Zev Yaroslavsky centered on the hiring of a lobbyist to push for the project without any disclosure that she is the wife of a one-time planning deputy for former City Council member Paul Koretz, who previously represented the area.
“I’m a former land use attorney, and this project does not pass the smell test,” Yaroslavsky declared during a May 17 City Council meeting ahead of a vote on a motion that would have effectively halted the project’s entitlement process. “I do not ask for this vote lightly, but I strongly believe it is necessary to protect the integrity of our planning process.”
High stakes, low wager
City Hall’s credibility has been reeling for years.
Along with a dizzying number of recent non-real estate scandals — last year’s leak of racist tapes that involved three of the 15 City Council members, the 2021 USC bribery scandal that snared another, a 2020 sexual harassment case involving a mayoral aide — the city’s development approvals process itself has been under intense scrutiny.
The biggest impact came from a jarring pay-to-play scandal, dubbed “Casino Loyale” by the feds, that revolved around Jose Huizar, a Downtown L.A. council member and chair of its Planning and Land Use Committee. Huizar, a years-long investigation proved, orchestrated a shakedown operation under which developers traded briefcases of cash and exotic gifts to public officials.
The fraud eventually brought down Huizar; council colleague Mitchell Englander; a council aide; a lobbyist; and developer David Lee, who in July was sentenced to six years in prison for his role. It continues to damage residents’ faith in the city’s development process, with former Deputy Mayor Ray Chan due to stand trial in the case.
The Bulgari Hotel ethics questions are in a different league. But the concerns — and the effort that preceded them — are also revealing.
Safady, a veteran commercial developer whose previous projects include a shopping center anchored by a Bass Pro Shop in Louisiana and a boutique Apple store, bought the Benedict Canyon property from billionaire Kirk Kerkorian in 2008 for $14.75 million, according to property records. Nearly a decade later, in the fall of 2017, his team submitted a request to initiate a zone change in order to make way for a commercial project.
“I’m a former land use attorney, and this project does not pass the smell test.”
By then, the developer had been opening his wallet in an effort to help grease the city’s wheels. In 2016, Safady’s company donated $8,400 — the maximum allowed — to the failed state Senate campaign of Shawn Bayliss, a then-38-year-old who also happened to be a longtime staff member for then-council member Koretz.
In early 2017, Safady’s company hired Bayliss’ wife, Stacey Brenner, a land use consultant, as a lobbyist; that October, it was Brenner who submitted the paperwork to request that the city initiate the zone change process.
The city’s planning director, Vince Bertoni, signed off on the request within 24 hours — an unusually rapid timeline that critics allege violates the city’s own procedural requirements and raises larger questions.
“It flies in the face of standard practice for city planning, so why did he do that?” said Casey Maddren.
A City Planning spokesperson said in a statement that the zone change initiation request “followed the City’s normal planning procedures at that time,” and that the director’s signature came after a long consideration by staff. “All City ethics rules/laws,” the spokesperson added, “are overseen by the Los Angeles Ethics Commission.”
Safady’s entity paid Brenner around $175,000, part of a total of around $2.75 million it spent on lobbying efforts — a sum that Yaroslavsky referred to as “an insane amount of money to try to influence the council.”
The big bucks are not surprising, ethics experts say.
“When the stakes are so high — when you have a $100 million project or whatever it is — what is $3 million to them?” said Sean McMorris, a transparency and ethics program manager at California Common Cause.
Safady did not respond to questions but previously told the L.A. Times that he had “minimal” contact with Bayliss in 2015, when the developer was early in the planning stages. Bayliss, who also did not respond to questions, has denied wrongdoing: The former planning deputy left his city post in May 2017, some five months after his wife registered as a project lobbyist, and has suggested he exerted no influence.
In a letter to the City Council, a lawyer for the developer also pushed back hard against the ethics allegations, asserting that Safady’s donations to Bayliss’ campaign were unrelated to the project and that the timing of Bayliss’ departure from City Hall, before the zone change initiation, precluded a conflict of interest.
The developer “has been transparent with the City, the public, elected officials, and even with the opposition,” the letter stated.
Brenner and Koretz — who initially supported the project but later came out against it and filed a motion to stop it — did not respond to inquiries.
Bayliss appears to have made no financial disclosure in regard to his wife’s work on the project.
The city’s Ethics Commission told TRD it cannot confirm or deny whether it’s investigating the matter.
Project opponents and ethics experts in any case agree that the situation, at a minimum, presents the appearance of a conflict — which they say is just as critical as actual conflict as far as public trust is concerned.
“The appearance is bad,” McMorris said, “and it continues to perpetuate the cynicism of residents of Los Angeles who’ve just seen one political scandal after another on corruption charges and ethics charges.”
The project’s status is still up in the air. In May, at the City Council meeting where Yaroslavsky raised the objections, the council ended up evenly split on her motion to rescind the zone change process. The tie — made possible by a vacant seat stemming from one of the body’s various scandals — allowed the members to push the item off for three months.
Yaroslavsky promptly began pushing new legislation that aims to tighten the city’s ethics laws in order to avoid a repeat of the Bulgari situation: The motion would require lobbyists to disclose tight relationships to council members or staff and prohibit them from advocating for development projects located in the relative’s district. The council voted unanimously to advance it.
But even as the Bulgari episode appears to have prompted a reform effort, the city is facing another development corruption scandal.
In June, just weeks after the explosive council meeting over the Bulgari project, the L.A. County District Attorney’s office announced it had filed multiple charges against Curren Price, a veteran council member who represents South L.A. The charges also related to a spousal tie: The DA alleged that Price’s wife, a lobbyist, received more than $150,000 from developers before Price was scheduled to vote on their projects.