Re “Council approves bonds for One Beverly Hills,” Aug. 21 issue

On Aug. 19, despite significant opposition, the BH council agreed to orchestrate a $550 million Mello-Roos bond indebtedness for the benefit of the One BH development.

The One BH project is an overly ambitious dual skyscraper luxury condo and Aman hotel project adjacent to the Beverly Hilton. The project’s lack of progress has been intentionally blocked from public view, but it appears that only incomplete demolition and digging have taken place.

A big selling point for the original approval was the promise that 4.5 acres of botanical gardens and Merv Griffin Way improvements would be constructed and maintained for public use. So these limited public amenities were used to support a Mello-Roos bond issue, generally used for projects with overwhelming public benefits – not luxury projects.

Council members asked the right questions. But regardless of the answers, council members and staff were more interested in trying to help what appears to be a failed development than observing their duty to protect the city.

The council required no showing of assets and liabilities and no completion guarantee. The council emphasized that the bond payments would be assessed only to property owners within the One BH project area, and there was little consideration of the risks the city would face due to its involvement.

A big incentive to orchestrate the bond indebtedness was that the city would receive $10 million of the bond proceeds to spend on city facilities.  However, city staff purposely concealed that the $10 million can only be spent on city facilities either within the One BH project area—the public portion of the botanical gardens and Merv Griffin Way—or for city facilities which directly serve and have a nexus to the One BH project.

Also concealed from the public in the agenda report were requirements for the city’s extensive ongoing involvement in the construction, bids, hiring, contracts, inspections, payments, etc., for the public portion of the botanical gardens and Merv Griffin Way and the levying and collection of bond taxes in addition to the orchestration of bond sales.

Some of our council members seemed to be motivated by an off-kilter obsession with luxury and “the Beverly Hills brand,” and appeared to be working for the owners of One BH – not the city and its residents.

Darian Bojeaux

Beverly Hills