It's getting nasty in them thar hills -- Beverly Hills, that is -- as voters wrestle over a proposal to build a $200-million luxury resort hotel, public garden and parking garage in the ritzy commercial district known as the Golden Triangle.
The proposed development has dominated civic discourse for more than a year and prompted a big-bucks campaign that pits developers of the planned Montage resort against the equally posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel, which is investing heavily to defeat the project.
By the time voters go to the polls Tuesday to vote on Measure A, the two sides between them probably will have spent nearly $3 million on political consultants, precinct walkers, absentee-ballot mailings and other electioneering, interviews and campaign finance documents suggest.
With fewer than 7,000 expected votes hanging in the balance, that means the two camps together will have devoted about $420 to each vote.
The eight-story Montage project has percolated for years. The city and Athens Group, which plans to develop the project, in 2001 began talks on revitalizing a section of land between Beverly and Canon drives, just north of Wilshire Boulevard.
Last summer, a brouhaha erupted when anti-hotel forces sent out volunteers and hired workers to begin collecting signatures to put the issue on the ballot. The hotel's developers in turn hired aggressive signature "blockers" to dissuade signers, and hapless Beverly Hills residents found themselves caught in the middle in grocery store parking lots.
"I've never seen this town so fractured," said Barry Brucker, a school board veteran running for a City Council seat Tuesday.
Funding for the Yes on A campaign has come from Beverly Hills Luxury Hotel LLC, a partnership of Athens Group, private investors and Montage Hotels & Resorts, which would be the hotel's operator. That partnership has so far contributed about $1.4 million toward the campaign.
Nearly all of the No on A side's funding is coming from a real estate development company owned by the family that also owns the 200-room, five-star Peninsula Beverly Hills. Probity International Corp. has kicked in more than $968,000 so far to fight the proposed 214-room Montage, which would be topped by 25 luxury condos.
"It's a question of basic fairness," said Robert Zarnegin, Probity's chief executive, whose four-story Peninsula, which opened in 1991, was built to comply with the city's 45-foot height limit. "If we hadn't gotten involved, the public opposition to this project wouldn't have been heard at all."
