Local News in Brief : A Limit on Mansions

You can never be too rich in Beverly Hills, but the City Council is taking steps to make sure your mansion doesn’t get too grand.

The council Tuesday adopted an interim ordinance establishing a building review procedure designed to make sure that hillside homes built north of Sunset Boulevard do not become so large that they “materially change the scale, integrity or character of the area.”

“The trend now is for bigger houses,” said Planning Commissioner Rose Norton. “That’s fine, but we’ve got to have some kind of guidelines to control how big something can be.”

“We need to look to the future of our community,” added Commissioner Meralee Goldberg.

According to planning officials, hillside homes of 10,000-square-feet--and more--are becoming the trend. And residents have been complaining that their spectacular views are being blocked and that the larger homes are incompatible with the stylish neighborhood.

The new procedure calls for notifying property owners within 500 feet of the proposed project. Currently, notification is not required for development of single-family homes that meet building code requirements.