At its May 20 Study Session, the Beverly Hills City Council heard presentations for the proposed Great Elephant Migration Art Exhibition to take place at Beverly Gardens Park in July 2025.
The council expressed enthusiasm for the exhibition and its contribution to the vibrant arts culture in Beverly Hills, voting to approve the proposed exhibition at the evening’s Regular Meeting.
The Great Elephant Migration is an ongoing, traveling art exhibition delivered by Elephant Family USA, a UK-based charity that works to protect wildlife through creativity and storytelling.
Launched in July 2024 in Newport, Rhode Island, the exhibition has made its way from the East to the West Coast, with stops in New York City, Miami Beach and Houston.
The exhibition publicly displays 100 Iife-sized Indian elephant sculptures, often in urban areas, promoting the coexistence between humans and wildlife. Each sculpture is based on a real elephant roaming through the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu, India. The sculptures were created by The Real Elephant Collective, a group of 200 Indigenous artisans from the Tamil Nadu region, who live close to and navigate space with those real elephants.
The elephants will be displayed along six blocks of Beverly Gardens Park from late June to early August 2025. An on-site manager and volunteers will be present during daytime operating hours to welcome guests and provide information about the exhibition.
Co-founders of the exhibition, Ruth Ganesh and Fiona Humphrey, presented their organization’s mission, decision to choose Beverly Hills, previous installations in different cities, and logistics surrounding the exhibition’s delivery.
“Why Beverly Hills? You’re so famous, everybody wants to come here, but perhaps your less famous residents are the answer to that question–your bobcats, your mountain lions, your coyotes–who are about to be part of the world’s greatest wildlife story, which is of course the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing,” said Ganesh.
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is a vegetated overpass designed to facilitate the safe passage of wildlife across the U.S. 101 Freeway. The crossing is currently under construction and slated to open in 2026.
Humphrey gave assurances that Elephant Family USA is committed to free transportation of the sculptures to and from Beverly Hills, free installation and deinstallation of the exhibition, free rental charges for the exhibition, and for covering the costs for overnight security and necessary irrigation replacement.
The council also heard a presentation from the city’s Director of Finance, Jeff Muir, introducing the formation of a Community Facilities District (CFD) to help finance eligible public improvements necessitated by the One Beverly Hills project.
The aim of the presentation was to provide the council with an explanation of what a CFD is and its connection to the One Beverly Hills project.
A CFD is a special financing district that allows municipal government agencies to fund public improvements and infrastructure. Property owners within the CFD boundaries would pay a special tax in addition to regular property taxes. The formation of a CFD is a public process governed by state law that typically takes three to six months. The process would be initiated by the City Council and then approved by a two-thirds vote by property owners who lie within the proposed CFD boundaries. If the CFD is approved, a Notice of Special Tax Lien is recorded, which formally establishes the CFD and the property owners’ special tax obligations.
CFDs typically fund public “backbone infrastructure,” such as street improvements, park maintenance and sewer improvements.
After developers of the One Beverly Hills project expressed a request to pursue a CFD in 2024, the city assembled a team of financial advisors and legal professionals to assist in navigating the formation of the CFD.
Councilmembers expressed the need to make information about CFDs as widely available to the public as possible, such as the risks and benefits to both property owners and the city.
Additional items at the Study Session included an update from the Traffic and Parking Commission, which recommended Beverly Hills resident Michael Karric to replace outgoing Commissioner Sharon Ignarro. City Manager Nancy Hunt-Coffey also asked the council to review and provide direction on different City Commission priorities for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
