The Beverly Hills Creative Offices project commenced the long environmental review process with a virtual scoping meeting held on Feb. 4. The purpose of a scoping meeting is to serve as early public outreach in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) process, a statutorily mandated procedure under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Masa Alkire, the city’s Project Manager for the development, explained to the 50-some people in the virtual meeting room that the city was looking “to solicit input on the scope of the Environmental Impact Report and also to inform the community about future opportunities for input.”
That input informs the direction of the EIR, which then gets drafted and presented to the public for another round of comments after a 45-day public review period. Alkire estimated that the city would release a Draft EIR sometime in the summer or fall of this year. The city will then release a Final EIR that addresses the additional questions from the draft–something that Alkire expects to happen in the winter. Then, the Planning Commission reviews the entitlements that the project is requesting and sends a recommendation to the City Council.
