Kind of sad watching Robinson's marble panels falling down on my morning drive pic.twitter.com/JP1b13BeiL
— Pat Saperstein (@EatingLA) July 21, 2014
The razing of the formerly glamorous Robinsons-May building in Beverly Hills has loomed on the horizon since early spring (and really for years), but now, we've got photographic evidence that it is happening at this very moment. Another shot from over the weekend, seen on Building LA, shows that the demolition is very far along and the site is mostly cleared. The site has long been destined for a fabulous luxury condo project designed by starchitect Richard Meier, but the last we'd heard from the property, it was up for sale yet again.
Most recent property owners Joint Treasure International Ltd. paid $148 million for the property back in 2010; the site was listed in April with entitlements for 235 condos and 21,000 square feet of groundfloor retail; the price was undisclosed but experts estimated it to be in the mid-$300-million range. Does Robinsons-May demolition mean that the property's been sold and that the two proposed mixed-use towers are any closer to actually being built? Curbed's calls to brokers for CBRE and Savills, who have been marketing the property, were not returned, so who knows! (PropertyShark does not show any sale, but that could just mean it hasn't closed and made the public record yet.) Update 6:18 pm: CBRE tells us the site has not sold, but the sellers decided to go ahead with demolition anyway.
This is a boom time for pricey projects in this section of Beverly Hills/LA, though—the 12-story Waldorf-Astoria project at Wilshire and Santa Monica is set to open in 2017 and, about a block away, the 40-story rental tower 10000 Santa Monica Boulevard just broke ground and should be ready for tenants sometime in the next two or three years.
· Beverly Hills' Vacant Robinsons-May Bites the Dust [BLA]
· Long-Delayed Richard Meier Project in Bev Hills For Sale Again [Curbed LA]
· 9900 Wilshire [Curbed LA]
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