Condo towers laden with greenery and lush botanical gardens will transform the main stretch of Beverly Hills under a new $ 2 billion plan that is being drawn to rebuild the old vacant land next door Terraced Beverly Hilton Hotels, where celebrities gather to get the annual Golden Globe Awards.

Placing 340 dwellings in two 32-storey towers, the complex named One Beverly Hills will have space for 8 hectares of native plantations and water features that are woven in a lane, most of which will be open to the public. There will also be an ultra 10 storey luxury hotel building.

This is an entirely new concept for a highly sought after expanse of land, most recently occupied by a glamorous department store, which has tricked many investors into spending more than $ 1 billion combined since 2007 without putting any bricks in place.

Property near the intersection of the streets of Wilshire and Santa Monica is considered one of the most desirable real estate development sites in the country and has been owned by investors from the United Kingdom, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore and China. Most intend to build luxury housing and hotel complexes that have been approved by the city but cannot follow through on their plans, usually for financial reasons.

In 2018, Beijing-based Dalian Wanda Group sold the land for $ 445 million, paving the way for a different design concept. Buyers are Alagem Capital Group, owner of neighboring Beverly Hilton, and partner of Cain International of London.

With a combined site of 17.5 acres in their control, owners can create a new plan that will marry part of the property by bridging the Merv Griffin Way, which divides the two packages.

Alagem Capital Chief Executive Beny Alagem said incorporating them into campus had been a destination since he bought Beverly Hilton from entertainer Merv Griffin in 2003.

“The natural way is to integrate them into the gateway to Beverly Hills,” he said. “This extraordinary site does that.”

Alagem canceled city-approved plan for the department store site conceived by Richard Meier, a famous architect who also designed the Getty Center in West Los Angeles. Alagem and his colleagues instead chose other famous architects, Norman Foster, a British ruler who is perhaps best known for designing cylindrical skyscrapers in London known as Gherkin and the headquarters of Apple Inc. which is circular in Cupertino, California.

Foster said in an interview that his plan was reminiscent of the period in the 1930s when architects who came to Los Angeles “embraced the health aspects of the climate” by designing structures with balconies, terraces and other features intended to integrate indoors and outdoors room. . One Beverly Hills will follow, focusing on the outside environment.

“This is not a beating of breasts, look-to-me architecture,” he said. “That is something you find on a human scale.”

Building architecture is an extension of green plants, he said. “The protagonist is a landscape, a garden.”

The 28- and 32-storey condominium towers will be “permeable” in view, Foster said, and far enough to keep the line of sight from afar. The hotel will be rebuilt from Wilshire Boulevard, partly on land now occupied by a 76-brand gas station that developers have also obtained.

This rendering shows a view of One Beverly Hills from Santa Monica Boulevard.

(DBOX for Alagem Capital Group)

The proposed hotel will have 42 all-suite rooms, along with luxury restaurants and 37 residential units. Two towers will contain 303 condos combined. Hotel residents and guests will be able to explore 3.5 hectares of gardens and a mile of special lane for them, while 4.5 hectares will be accessible to the public.

One Beverly Hills will also have a four-storey building open to the public with boutiques and casual dining in the upstairs pavilion that will open footpaths and parks. It will replace the existing garage on Santa Monica Boulevard which was built to serve Beverly Hilton, which opened in 1955.

Parking for 1,900 cars will be underground, under most new developments. The complex will offer free two-hour parking, but Foster does not anticipate that the park will be filled with visitors.

“This is not mass entertainment in the Disney sense,” he said. “Quite a number of people will welcome a break from the urbanity of the city, and the luxury of terraces and coffee.”

The gardens have been designed by Los Angeles landscape architect Mark Rios, who also designed the 12-acre Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles and recently completed a master plan for Descanso Gardens at La Cañada Flintridge.

His plan for One Beverly Hills calls for nine different botanical gardens that are intended to reflect the diverse landscape of Southern California with most drought-resistant plants that live in recycled water. The garden will have more than 300 species of plants and trees including palms, oaks, sycamore trees, succulents and willow trees.

“I’m really interested in pursuing what the botanical environment is for the 21st century,” he said. It will consume a lot of carbon dioxide while “teaching people that drought-quality planting does not mean cactus.”

The two condominium towers, displayed in the lower left of the triangle package in the One Beverly Hills rendering, will be the tallest in Beverly Hills.

(DBOX for Alagem Capital Group)

One Beverly Hills will not be larger in square feet than a proposal previously approved for a site known as 9900 Wilshire, Alagem said, but the building will be the tallest in the city. The 18-story building construction has been approved for the combined location, and he hopes its location near Century City skyscrapers will reduce fears about height.

The price of the condo has not been established, but Beverly Hills is one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, and the unit can be estimated to cost millions of dollars. Alagem anticipates that some owners will become residents of other countries who want additional housing, but he predicts that most buyers will become domestic including uninhabited Beverly Hills who want to leave their large homes but remain in the city.

On Monday, the developers will submit their proposals to the city to begin the approval process, which can take a year or more. They hope to start construction by the end of 2021 and complete the project in 2024.

Alagem had just revealed his plans in public, but he had received support from two former California governors.

“One Beverly Hills is what we need to start our economic recovery,” Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis said in a statement. “This provides thousands of new, well-paid jobs and will bring millions of short-term economic benefits and billions of long-term benefits for our local government and schools.”

The project will provide 1,500 construction jobs and 900 permanent jobs, the developer said, and One Beverly Hills will pay $ 1.2 billion in new taxes and fees for the city and $ 79 million in new property taxes for local schools for 30 years.

The long-closed Robinsons-May convenience store next to Beverly Hilton was torn down in 2014.

(Christina House / For The Times)

Included in the construction will be changes to Beverly Hilton such as bringing down the additional Oasis Tower 181 rooms to the original hotel and replacing the existing conference center with a new one that will have a restaurant, shop and meeting room. The lobby and ballroom will be upgraded and 36 rooms will be added to the poolside cabanas.

The Gensler Company is the project’s executive architect, who is responsible for making detailed plans based on Foster’s design.