Beverly Hills

Drawing from Japanese and Midcentury Modern architecture, this house was designed to showcase an extensive art collection. A mix of natural materials, including redwood, limestone, oak and Bouquet Canyon stone, gives the house a dramatic appearance from the street. Location: 818 N. Roxbury Drive, Beverly Hills 90210 Asking price: $12.5 million Year built: 1999 Architects: Leonardo Umansky, Ramiro Diaz-Granados House size: Four bedrooms, six bathrooms, 9,302 square feet Lot size: 19,132 Features: Retractable walls, glass doors, high ceilings, fireplaces in the living and family rooms, sculptured dining room ceiling, breakfast room, office, gym, art storage room, swimming pool, lawn About the area: Last year, 316 single-family homes sold in the 90210 ZIP Code at a median price of $2.83 million, according to DataQuick.

Yet another juice bar! Riding the cold-pressed juice trend and on its way to world domination by green smoothie, Pressed Juicery expands its empire and opens its first location in Beverly Hills -- its seventh location in Southern California. The company also has stores in Northern California, 12 stores in all. The purveyor of kale-spinach-romaine-parsley-cucumber-celery juice, aloe vera water and the like (including juice cleanse packages) already has locations in Brentwood, downtown, Studio City, West Hollywood and Westwood Village, along with a juice truck located in Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway and the refrigerator at the Toms store in Venice.

How much would you pay to live where William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies called home? How steep is too steep to sleep where John and Jacqueline Kennedy honeymooned? OK, rich kids of Instagram , what would you say to a Beverly Hills manse with a $600,000-a-month lease? And yes, if you can afford it, you can brag: Its listing agent, Jeffrey Hyland of Hilton & Hyland, says the Mediterranean-style house “may be the most expensive lease in the country.” So now we'll see if those tax increases we voted for in November really have chased all the rich people out of California.

In his bid for Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti has promoted himself as the greenest of candidates. The city councilman from Silver Lake has pushed for an expansion of L.A.'s rooftop solar-panel program and the creation of thousands of clean-energy jobs, all to reduce the region's dependence on oil. Those positions helped Garcetti win the Sierra Club's endorsement. Missing from Garcetti's environmental platform, however, is any hint that he has long stood to profit from a lease interest in a headline-making oil drilling operation: the wells run by Venoco Inc. at Beverly Hills High School.

The current luxury real estate market is redefining “extravagant.” First, a 8,930-square-foot house on nine acres in Northern California found a buyer for a state record-breaking $117 million. Then word came that financier Gary Winnick is quietly asking $225 million for his trophy home on an 8.4-acre knoll in Bel-Air. Now, a Beverly Hills estate is being offered for lease at $600,000 a month, dwarfing the $150,000 a month asked for summer months at Malibu's finest properties or the $100,000 a month paid by singing legend Michael Jackson for his last residence in Holmby Hills.

Re "Beverly Hills' subway spat," Editorial, Feb. 19 There is widespread support for the Westside subway extension in Beverly Hills. Notwithstanding the tunneling issue, about 65% of the city's residents voted in favor of Measure R in 2008 as well as its extension on last November's ballot. The opposition to tunneling beneath Beverly Hills High School is small but vocal; it has been augmented by misleading and inflammatory articles in the Beverly Hills Courier, whose publisher doesn't even live in or adjacent to Beverly Hills.

An 85-year-old Beverly Hills building erected in the Golden Age of Hollywood by movie mogul Jack Warner has been sold for $11.75 million to a local investor. The two-story structure that curves along Little Santa Monica Boulevard downtown at North Beverly Drive is one of the oldest commercial properties in the city, real estate broker Mark Esses said. Warner built the 11,000-square-foot building in 1928 to house the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. The young city had yet to open a public library, The Times reported early in 1929, but one was being planned.

It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events. You hear about the grand Oscar parties, but you will never be invited. The award ceremony may be taking place minutes from where you live, but you watch it at home, on TV, in your sweat pants - and you might as well be in Dubuque. Rodeo Drive too can make you feel like a scrap on the cutting room floor. As you stroll the wide and immaculate sidewalks of Beverly Hills' iconic shopping street, you pass by boutiques you'd feel self-conscious walking into.

An 85-year-old Beverly Hills building erected in the golden age of Hollywood by movie mogul Jack Warner has been sold for $11.75 million to a local investor. The two-story structure that curves along Little Santa Monica Boulevard downtown at North Beverly Drive is one of the oldest commercial properties in the city, real estate broker Mark Esses said. Warner built the 11,000-square-foot building in 1928 to house the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. The young city had yet to open a public library, The Times reported early in 1929, but one was being planned.

Beverly Hills' embarrassing battle against the Westside subway extension, which emerged as a major political issue last year, is becoming one of the key issues in the March 5 city elections. With the lines hardening between those determined to take legal action to stop the construction of a tunnel under the local high school, which they fear will endanger students, and those who see that route as the safest alternative, we urge residents to consider the scientific and engineering reality rather than merely relying on emotion.