Beverly Hills stops the richest man in the world: Lvmh's luxury hotel on Rodeo Drive rejected
The symbol of luxury turns its back on the richest man in the world, who has become so thanks to a very luxurious empire. It happens in Beverly Hills, where the Lvmh group of Bernard Arnault wanted to build, up Rodeo Drive, a super-exclusive hotel. Between saying and doing, the vote of the local community (32,000 people in the county of LA) got in the way, which with a referendum sent the project back to the sender.
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The result arrived on Friday night, and apparently not even the 2.9 million check that the European group spent to support the project approval campaign was not enough to overcome local resistance, says the Financial Times.
Even before the definitive outcome, it reports instead the Bloomberga spokeswoman had explained that the Cheval Blanc Beverly Hills project was being rejected by a small margin, and that in any case the company would have acknowledged it by pledging not to resubmit it in the future.
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The City newspaper explains how the attempt to put the first foot of Lvmh in the stars and stripes luxury hotels is halted. Cheval Blanc opened its first location in Courchevel, in 2006, and has since grown. Moreover, the group had already spent over 3 billion on hotels before the pandemic Belmond.
The proposal put forward by Lvmh - the first European group to exceed 500 billion in capitalization - had received the approval of local officials. But the trade union which represents 32,000 workers in the hospitality sector took it head-on, collecting signatures to put it to the vote. Among other things, they noted that the agreement to develop the hotel did not provide for the construction of affordable housing for workers and domestic workers active in that area, which is economically unsustainable for them (the median household income is $100,000 ).
Now that the project is winding down, opinions are still divided: between those who speak of a "terrible decision" reading it as a missed opportunity and those who toast the fact that Beverly Hills is not a "brand to be exploited, but the our home".
