National Night Out is Tuesday at 6 p.m. In Front Of The Fire Department!
BEVERLY HILLS VOLUME: LII
NUMBER 30
www.bhcourier.com
SINCE 1965
July 28, 2017
Tenants, Landlords To Seek Consensus Sunday In Marathon Session
BUT FIRST, COFFEE — Alfred Coffee, the brainchild of longtime Beverly Hills resident Josh Zad, officially opened its doors this week on North Beverly Drive. Pictured left: Zad with Mayor Lili Bosse at the coffee shop’s grand opening. For more information on Alfred Coffee, see page 4.
THIS ISSUE
Pop star Justin Bieber was involved in an incident with paparazzi Wednesday. 4
Beverly Hills goes B.O.L.D. – and colorful – this summer. 5
LACMA is staging its first Marc Chagall exhibit in 40 years. 8 •Real Estate •Sports •Letters to the Editor
10 16 31
School Board Reviews Superintendent Bregy 20 Days Before School Begins By Laura Coleman With little more than two weeks of summer vacation remaining for some 4,000 Beverly Hills youngsters before Beverly Hills Unified School District classes resume Aug. 14, on Tuesday the Board of Education met in closed session to evaluate Superintendent Michael Bregy’s performance. Board members were light on praise when it came to Bregy’s sixmonth mark. Both Board VP Lisa Korbatov and member Howard Goldstein deferred to their colleagues when asked for a comment on how he’s doing. Board member Isabel Hacker more expressively offered a succinct: “I concur with Mel's statement;” after Board President Mel Spitz shared with his colleagues and the Courier the following: “Dr. Bregy took up his responsibilities at BHUSD at a time of severe organizational challenges, and lacking an effective manage-
BHUSD Superintendent Michael Bregy
ment team. During his first six months on the job he dealt with those challenges single-handedly. He has now completed the appointments to his management team, and is well prepared to lead our schools to a new era of prominence and academic excellence.” Following Tuesday’s closed session meeting, agendized as a “performance evaluation” for the superintendent, second term board member Noah Margo emailed the Courier: “Dr. Bregy is remarkably goal driven and results (see ‘BREGY REVIEW’ page 19)
George Christy, Page 6
CLASSIFIEDS • Announcements • Real Estate • Rentals • Sales • and More
Hershey Felder Presents
Traveling On The Italian Island Of Sicily, The Wallis’ Public Relations Consultant Gary Murphy Was Joined By Companions Ellen Porter, Rosalie Woodside and Jason La Padura. They Discovered A Pastericcia With The Best Marzipan 25
MR. GENIUS — Hershey Felder’s performance of Russian composer Tchaikovsky at The Wallis continues through August 13. Not to be missed. For more photos, see George Christy’s column on page 6.
By Victoria Talbot After months of wrangling, frayed nerves, tempers, and distrust, the landlord-tenant debate is moving into a new phase of cooperation. Following four grueling, threehour, facilitated meetings, in which each side hammered out their issues and their proposals for solutions, the two sides will be working together on Sunday to reach either full or partial consensus with the facilitator. Pepperdine Assistant Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution Sukhsimranjit Singh has created a process where the disparate groups have been cooperative, respectful and tolerant, despite their widely varying interests. Though there appears to be a deep chasm between them, there is the willingness to come together, under the auspices of Singh’s neutrality, to forge a plan to move forward.
Tuesday, each group selected seven representatives who volunteered to meet Sunday at Roxbury Park for a marathon five-hour session to try to reach consensus on proposals for rent stabilization issues they have mutually identified both sides can live with. The meetings will be open to the public, but conversation between the volunteers and observers will be limited to break times. The sessions will be between the 14 selected volunteers with Singh facilitating. The process has been arduous and complicated, and many participants have expressed their frustrations passionately. Tempers have flared, and on each side, stories abound. It has been difficult for each side to stay on point, to focus on the issues, without straying to conversations about individual stories, questions about how this (see ‘BEVERLY HILLS RENT’ page 19)
As Financial Woes Mount, Wanda Group Pulls Back On Hollywood Investments By Matt Lopez Weeks after announcing it would sell off 13 theme parks and 77 hotels to a Chinese property developer, China’s Dalian Wanda Group announced this week that it is halting any further plans to invest in Hollywood. Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin told Chinese financial publication Caixin this week that Wanda would focus more on its domestic market going forward, saying his organization has “decided to keep its main investment within China.” Last week, it was reported that Chinese financial regulators had ordered the country’s largest banks to cease extension of loans toward Wanda’s effort to finance foreign entertainment investments. That came to light after a document from regulators that issued a warning circulated on Chinese social media last week. Later that week, credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s
put Wanda on a negative credit watch over concerns that selling off assets to pay down debt could negatively impact the company’s revenue. The decision was not the only setback this week for Wanda, which has tried to aggressively expand into Hollywood over the last few years with acquisitions of Legacy Entertainment and AMC Entertainment. One Beverly Hills, the $1.2 billion development that was approved last year, was believed to have been a major part of that Hollywood expansion. A report Wednesday from South China Morning Post claimed that Wanda had dropped out of running to purchase Bandar Malaysia, a 486acre development site that Free Malaysia Today described as the “property portion of the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore highspeed rail project.” (see ‘WANDA GROUP’ page 11)