“If You Don’t Want to Know Who You’re Going to Bed With, Then Don’t Look at It.” West Hollywood To Have a Closer Look Who It’s Doing Business With

West Hollywood City Council (eventually) made it unanimous Monday night. Developer background checks are now required for anyone applying for a Development Agreement or Specific Plan. Getting there took the better part of an hour.

Meister told WEHOonline ahead of the vote, “It’s about protecting the City” and nothing more than due diligence. She said residents are required to submit more information just to lease a car or get a mortgage. She’s not wrong. This issue has been on her radar since at least February 2025. That’s when the City confirmed the Melrose Triangle was finished — entitlements gone, developer ordered to fill the hole — aka Lake WeHo, and said from the dais that developers ought to use their real names instead of hiding behind LLCs. Nobody did anything about it then. Monday they did.

It’s worth clarifying what this actually covers. There was some confusion about it during the debate.

Development Agreements are contracts. The council votes to give a developer something they couldn’t get under standard zoning, and the developer provides a public benefit in return. That’s the narrow slice this applies to. Standard approvals don’t trigger it. Housing by right doesn’t trigger it. A lot of the holes in the ground around town aren’t these. “A lot of those projects, they weren’t development agreements,” Meister said. “However, if those companies come back and say, we want a development agreement, it’s important for us to know what they’ve done in the city.”

Heilman was for it. He said the City routinely enters into long-term contracts with developers and doesn’t have a systematic way of knowing who those developers actually are. That struck him as a problem worth fixing, and not a complicated one.

Erickson had a different read. The application gets filed, the background information goes into a file, and then the project spends years working through the approval process before the council ever sees it. When it finally lands on the dais, the information is stale and every other body has already reviewed it. Council members, he said, can’t look at materials before a public hearing without prejudging the project, so what exactly are they getting?

Erickson had a second problem with it. Say a council member pulls up a developer’s track record and doesn’t like what they see. What’s to stop that from quietly shaping how they vote on a completely separate application from the same entity down the road?

Meister wasn’t buying it.

“That’s like saying we can’t look at the planning commission file, or we can’t look at an application,” she said. “Of course we can look at it. We’re just not allowed to make a decision or prejudge something.”

Then: “If you don’t want to know who you’re going to bed with, then don’t look at it.”

The City Attorney confirmed the item covers only Development Agreements and Specific Plans. Both are legislative decisions. The council has full discretion.

Meister on the LLC problem.

“You can have an LLC, and we have no idea who is behind the LLC at this point,” she said. “This would require that anyone that has 25% or more of that LLC, their name goes on that application. So we know who it is. We have a right to know. They are going to be getting millions and millions and millions of dollars of increased value in their property.”

Vice Mayor Danny Hang said he worried about the City’s reputation with developers.

“The City is getting a bad rap that people don’t want to invest here because they feel like it’s difficult enough with their current processes,” he said.

Meister was brief, stating what was obvious to many.

“This is the mechanism,” she said. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The wheel’s been done.”

Councilmember Chelsea Byers said she’d support it but wanted Staff to vet the implementation before anything went live.

“Until we have something that Staff has vetted thoroughly, we’re just having an imaginary conversation right now,” Byers said.

Heilman finished with the clearest statement of the night.

“We’ve had experiences where people come forward and they have somebody as the front entity — saying, oh, we’re going to bring this wonderful activity here — but then you look behind it, and it’s really a spec developer,” he said. “And we should know who the principal is.”

He compared the disclosure to an EIR. Information isn’t prejudgment.

“We have EIRs prepared. We have negative declarations prepared. Those are all information. That information doesn’t mean that we’ve approved or denied a project. It is not a form of prejudgment.”

Erickson voted yes in the end.

“I just worry about unintended, already prejudgment that we’re making on people wanting to do things in our city before we actually hear the public hearing that is going to be before us,” he said. “That is my only concern. But it sounds like you won’t be doing that on anything in the future, so I’m happy to support this.”

The motion passed unanimously.

“All that discussion,” Heilman said, “and it is unanimously approved. Thank you, everyone, for speaking. And thank you, Councilmember Meister, for bringing this forward.”

What Happens Next

The new requirements take effect for applications submitted on or after January 1, 2027. Staff will develop standardized disclosure forms and bring the framework back to council before rollout. The submitted information will be included in staff reports going forward.

“This would be part of the initial application,” Meister said. “Whoever is helping you fill out that application at the beginning — once it’s done, it’s done. Staff doesn’t do anything with that information except include it in the staff report.”

WEHOonline caught up with Councilmember Meister the morning after the vote. We asked her how she felt. “As stewards of the public interest, which includes land use, community benefits, and long-term outcomes, having a clear understanding of who we are entering into development agreements with is a fundamental part of our job as council members. This item supports better-informed council decisions and greater transparency for all. I’m glad that it finally passed unanimously, although I’m surprised there were any reservations at all.”

We also asked her what next steps would be.

“Planning staff puts together the questions that will be added to the project application form for applicants seeking a Development Agreement. I assume the City Attorney will review, and then they will bring it back to council — hopefully as a consent item — for council’s final blessing.” 

It looks like West Hollywood will finally have a closer look at its bed partners. And honestly, they’ll be thankful the morning after that they did. Wouldn’t you?