Hotel is sought on store’s Beverly Hills site
The London-based owners of the former Robinsons-May department store property on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills said Tuesday that they wanted to reduce the number of condominiums in their planned $1-billion residential and retail development, replacing them with hotel rooms.
“We plan to go back to the city and ask for approvals for a five-star hotel,” developer Nicholas Candy said. It would be about the size of the Peninsula Beverly Hills, he added, which has 196 rooms.
Candy’s 8-acre property at 9900 Wilshire Blvd. has already been approved for 252 condos to be designed by prominent architect Richard Meier. Plans call for two 12-story buildings, a two-story building containing town houses, and two four-story loft buildings situated around landscaped gardens. There also would be a one-story building along Santa Monica Boulevard for a restaurant and a few shops.
Candy said he and his brother, Christian, would ask the city for permission to build 200 to 250 hotel rooms and 100 to 125 condos without changing the look or size of the overall development.
In reworking the project, the Candy brothers are trying to improve their chances of getting construction financing in a tight credit market. Hotels are believed to produce a steadier flow of income than condominiums -- especially at a time when condominium sales have stalled. Building both condos and a hotel would “spread the risk,” Nicholas Candy said.
If the city goes along with the proposal, he plans to demolish the old department store, then make required repairs to an underground water main at the site next summer while a nearby school is out of session. Construction could begin in 2010.
Beverly Hills representatives weren’t able to provide an official response to the Candys’ proposal Tuesday, but said that changes to the plan would have to be approved by the City Council.
The Candy brothers’ planned development is next door to a controversial proposed hotel and condo project at the Beverly Hilton. Voters will decide Nov. 4 whether to allow the owner of that property to build a high-rise Waldorf-Astoria hotel and two luxury condo towers on its site at the busy intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards.
The Hilton maintains that the proposed project would provide millions of dollars of needed tax revenue for police, firefighters and schools and would revitalize a dated corner. Opponents say the project is just too big and fear it would create more traffic congestion.
One of the critics of the Hilton project, local resident Macey Lipman, said the Candys’ proposal was less onerous. “I don’t think we would object to a hotel if it were the size of the Peninsula,” he said.
Lipman did, however, express concern that hotel rooms would generate more traffic than condominiums.
Nicholas Candy countered that the site had also been approved for a department store, which would produce more traffic than a hotel or condominiums.
Christian Candy’s CPC Group owns the Beverly Hills property with Iceland’s Kaupthing Bank and London restaurateur Richard Caring. Recent economic turmoil in Iceland put the bank in receivership and raised concerns that the Candys might lose control of the property.
“They left us at the altar,” Nicholas Candy said.
The Candys are negotiating with the bank and hope to acquire its shares in the property.
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