Two more residents have tossed their hats into the 2022 City Council race, Darian Bojeaux and Deborah Blum. The two candidates announced a platform of preserving the “village” quality of the city and opposing large-scale developments.
“I am running for City Council because the Council majority is not properly representing the majority of residents. Rather, they are trying to make major changes to the city that they want, regardless of what the residents want,” Bojeaux, a vocal opponent of the city’s Mixed-Use Ordinance, told the Courier in a statement.
Bojeaux, an attorney, pointed to the passage of the Mixed-Use Ordinance and the approval of the One Beverly Hills luxury hotel and condominium development, “which had been poorly and improperly pre-negotiated in advance without input from residents,” she argued. If elected, she promises to oppose the nine-story height of the Cheval Blanc Beverly Hills hotel in the Business Triangle and the Lots 12 and 13 project along Santa Monica Boulevard.
Blum, a longtime resident with a background in film and television production, described herself to the Courier as a “reluctant candidate.” Citing many of the same concerns as Bojeaux, she worried that projects like the Cheval Blanc would turn the city into “another Westwood.”
“Like the Wilshire Corridor,” she said, “where we’ve got all these high rises cropping up in the middle of the city and around us. That ruined Westwood. It could ruin Beverly Hills.”
“As a documentary writer-director, I’ve traveled all over the United States and Europe and South America and looked at a lot of cities, so I feel that I have a sophisticated view of how people treat their history,” she said. “I see that the cities that are the gems that still retain a magic for tourists… are the ones who preserve the integrity of the original architecture.”
