Updated 4:20 pm: There is some major NIMBY drama playing out by the sixteenth hole of the Los Angeles Country Club, where the owners want to put up a fence as tall as an adjacent proposed condo complex—either to protect the club from liability or to attempt to sabotage the unwanted condos, depending on who you ask. We haven't heard much out of the much much-embattled, Richard-Meier-designed 9900 Wilshire lately, but apparently developer BH Wilshire International is still planning to put up two 14-to-16-story towers with 235 condos and groundfloor retail space on the site of the old Robinsons-May in Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, LACC wants up put up a 166-foot-tall, "800-foot-long mesh fence – with palm fronds on top – near the 16th hole of the south course to keep wayward balls from hitting the luxury condos," according to the LA Business Journal. (The fence would stand as tall as the buildings themselves.)
BH Wilshire has filed an appeal of the fence, saying it would be "so massive and visually unattractive that it will block views and cast excessive shade on the new buildings, thereby inhibiting BH Wilshire's ability to sell condominiums," as quoted by Golf Digest.
Last year, two planning bodies waived the usual 30-foot height requirement for the LACC, giving it the go-ahead to build a fence five times the normal height limit. (Planning seems to be going around the rules in a lot of noticeable ways these days.) LACC says they are trying to help by protecting tenants from crappy golfers' wayward shots, but BH Wilshire's appeal cites, among other the things, the absence of mega-fences anywhere else on the course, even though it's surrounded by pricey estates, plus a lack of "credible" evidence of golf balls damaging any property in the area in the course's 50 years of existence. The LA City Council will hear the matter in April.
Update: The LA Business Journal reported today that BH Wilshire says demolition will start this summer and they'll break ground on the towers "during the first half of next year."
· Los Angeles Country Club in Beverly Hills spat [GD]
· Golf-Ball Blocker Fence Too High? [LABJ]
· Richard Meier-Designed 9900 Wilshire Adds Parking, Ditches Units For the Help [Curbed LA]
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