Luxury shopping is synonymous with Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. New mixed-use projects in the city are upping the ante.
Take Cain International’s 17.5-acre One Beverly Hills project, which will link a newly renovated Beverly Hilton with the first Aman-branded property on the West Coast, along with some 200,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. The first of the tenants announced this past week include Dolce & Gabbana, Los Mochis and Casa Tua Cucina.
Meantime, Streetworks Development’s 9600 Wilshire plan for the former Saks Fifth Avenue building is inching forward after being approved by the Planning Commission in August. Streetworks envisions nearly 80 apartment units, a boutique hotel, spa, social club, over 60,000 square feet of retail and restaurants and about 45,000 square feet of office.
Then there’s Rodeo Drive, which has long served as the mecca for luxury shopping globally. That real estate’s gone from predominantly family and private ownership to corporate holdings, mostly notably that of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The Paris-based luxury conglomerate has spent more than $900 million over roughly the past decade, scooping up space on the street. Its Louis Vuitton brand received approval last week for a new flagship, which will sit on Santa Monica Boulevard between Rodeo and Beverly drives.
“It’s very rare that you get the opportunity to envision and execute on a new heart of a city like Beverly Hills,” Cain International CEO Jonathan Goldstein told the Wall Street Journal.
Cain is developing One Beverly Hills with Miami-based Oko Group.
The LVMH of it All
The concept of a “new heart,” as Goldstein put it, or new anchor for Beverly Hills is a bold one.
Rodeo Drive has long defined the city. The name alone resonates globally and it’s the home of flagship after flagship of luxury brands sitting atop pricey real estate.
Ian Putnam, president and CEO of Saks Global Properties and Investments, said about as much of the city in the context of what Streetworks is doing about half a mile away from Cain International’s mixed-use project.
“Beverly Hills is home to some of the world’s most glamorous and exciting luxury shopping destinations, though as a community, the city has the charm of a close-knit village,” Putnam said in a statement back in 2022 as the Saks Fifth Avenue project began winding its way through the city departments.
Putnam went on to say the Streetworks project will bring “underutilized” property in a key commercial corridor “into the 21st century.”
There’s part of the rub.
Rodeo Drive rents rose 19 percent to $1,100 per square foot in 2024, according to an annual report by Cushman & Wakefield of the most expensive high streets globally. That’s second behind Fifth Avenue in New York with Beverly Hills rent growth nearly five times more than what most retail real estate saw in 2024.
The rent runup makes sense with so little space available as luxury conglomerates quickly snap up parcels as they becomes available.
LVMH alone has been on a major spending spree since 2012, when it paid $85 million for 319-323 N. Rodeo Drive, which is home to the Dior flagship that opened over the weekend. Most recently, in 2023, a shell company tied to LVMH’s real estate executive was behind the $43 million buy of 357 N. Beverly Drive.
Luxury Commodification?
The “close-knit village” described by Putnam back in 2022 is becoming less and less of a descriptor for the city with the incoming set of mixed-use projects and hybrid flagship boutiques tied to food and other experiences.
With so much corporate money being tied to real estate ownership, the question is whether Beverly Hills avoids the Las Vegas shopping trap of turning luxury into a commodity.
In other words, can the city stay away from becoming a venue for brand duplication within such close proximity.
Dolce & Gabbana has planted a flag at One Beverly Hills as the first fashion brand to be announced at the project. The brand also has a store just minutes away in the Two Rodeo collection of boutiques.
Dolce & Gabbana likely won’t be the only one to double up, given LVMH’s real estate holdings on Rodeo Drive and the fact that navigating the Los Angeles area by car can be a hassle.
No one is suggesting Rodeo Drive will become the Las Vegas Strip, populated with an unwieldy amount of neon lights and digital signage to beckon shoppers into the roughly four-mile stretch’s many malls. However, the redundancy on the Strip of brands such as YSL, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci and Ferragamo lends to a sea of sameness.
It becomes less specialty retail and more mass, regardless of price point or quality.
Then again, perhaps more is more as the lack of room for new brands or expansions on Rodeo Drives has paved the way for other streets to emerge, most notably Beverly Drive. With project starts and completions nearing, it won’t be long before a clear answer emerges for which way the city goes.
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