Local News in Brief : Talks on Greystone Mansion Collapse
Negotiations to turn the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills into a Westside branch of the County Museum of Natural History have collapsed, representatives of both sides said Wednesday.
The announcement came after months of talks between Beverly Hills and county officials.
The museum would have featured exhibitions, educational programs and research at the city-owned mansion, originally built for the oil-rich Doheny family. The county would have paid about $2.5 million to renovate the structure, and one of the country’s most extensive ornithology collections would have been housed on the grounds.
But in the course of the negotiations it became clear that the city wanted to retain too much control over the county’s use of the building, said James Gilson, an attorney for the Natural History Museum Foundation.
“The city understandably wanted to have a lot of flexibility over the site, but you can’t have both flexibility and long-term commitment,” Gilson said.
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