BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Dior, Prada, Lanvin. Rodeo Drive is a veritable who's who of high end, as are the manicured, celebrity-studded streets surrounding it. The median home value in Beverly Hills is $3.5 million. Yet, for all its rarefied status, the 90210 zip code has not been immune to COVID-19. 

"We've gone through shutdowns. We've had a partial opening again only to be shut down immediately thereafter," said Beverly Hills Mayor Lester Friedman, who gave his State of the City address from the patio of the legendary Greystone Mansion as part of a virtual Back to Business confab put together by the city's Chamber of Commerce. "It's really a matter of adjusting to what's going on right now." 

Friedman was sworn in as Beverly Hills mayor at the pandemic's height, March 31, having served on city council previously. On Wednesday, he gave an update on how Beverly Hills has so far responded to the COVID-19 crisis and how it's working to bounce back.

Since June, when the Beverly Hills City Council approved its OpenBH initiative to temporarily allow businesses to expand their operations into parking lots, sidewalks and, most recently, parklets set up in parking spaces, the city has issued more than 100 permits to restaurants and retailers through an expedited special events permit process. 

"We are going to continue to do that as long as [it] is necessary, and the restrictions are in force, so our businesses have a chance of being successful during this period of time," Friedman said.

Beverly Hills was one of the first cities to mandate face coverings in public due to the pandemic — in early April. To enforce the face-covering requirement, Beverly Hills started with an education campaign, then reinforced it with individuals "in the streets actually reminding people that you needed to wear your face covering," Friedman said. 

Recognizing that some people still were not adhering to the rules, the city started handing out citations: $100 for the first offense, $200 for the second, and $500 for a third time. Friedman said Beverly Hills has issued between 250 to 300 citations so far.

In addition to the 12 propositions Californians will be asked to vote on next month, Beverly Hills residents can weigh in on Measure RP. Short for revenue protection, Measure RP is designed to preserve the wiggle room between the maximum allowable sales tax rate in the state (10.25%) and what Beverly Hills currently charges (9.5%). The Beverly Hills City Council unanimously voted to add the measure to November's ballot.

Under existing law, L.A. County or another regional entity could raise Beverly Hills' sales tax and collect the additional revenue. Measure RP is designed to ensure that any revenues from an increased sales tax would "stay directly in the community" for use by the police, fire, or public works departments — "anything that we as a community feel that we need," Friedman said.

There are two major hotel projects in the works in Beverly Hills, Friedman said. The 14.7-acre One Beverly Project combines a former Robinsons-May department store site with the property beneath the Beverly Hilton and Waldorf Astoria hotels. When completed, the project will include a ten-story luxury hotel, two greenery-infused residential towers housing 303 units, more than 35,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, as well as 10 acres of public and private open space.

The other major hotel project is in Beverly Hills' Golden Triangle area. Spearheaded by the French luxury brand, LVMH, the Cheval Blanc is an ultra-premium, 115-room hotel on the corner of Rodeo Drive and Little Santa Monica Blvd. The hotel is slated for opening in 2025 and was designed by Peter Marino, the same New York architect who designed the Louis Vuitton and Dior boutiques on Rodeo Drive. 

L.A. Metro is expanding its Purple Line from where it now ends, in Koreatown, to the city's westside, cutting through Beverly Hills, which will get two planned stops on Rodeo Drive and La Cienega Boulevard. With the Purple Line extension expected to be completed and ready to ride in 2024, both stations are currently under construction.

Friedman said the La Cienega station is much further along than Rodeo Drive, to the point that "we're starting now to look at the streetscape area to make it welcoming for everybody who wants to visit," he said. 

That said, the Rodeo Drive station is seven months ahead of schedule. Friedman said Beverly Hills took advantage of lessened traffic resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic to shut down a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard for six weeks and speed up construction.