Beverly hills

On November 20, 2018 the Beverly Hills City Council passed Ordinance 18-O-2767 to require the seismic retrofit of older "soft-story" wood-frame buildings that are vulnerable to collapse during an earthquake. The seismic retrofit ordinance went into effect on January 11, 2019. Any multi-family structure that meets the criteria below will require a seismic retrofit.

Qualifying Criteria:

• Wood-frame, multi-family structure built before January 1978 with two (2) stories or more

• Ground floor has "tuck in" parking areas or similar open floor space causing, soft/weak wall lines.

If you own an apartment building in the city of Beverly Hills, we can help you protect your investment, your property, and more importantly ...help save your tenant's lives. We've created this website to help Beverly Hills property owners like you learn about seismic retrofits for multi-family properties. There are hundreds of retrofit contractors in Los Angeles - but none of them build retrofit solutions like we do. You can access all of our resources below for free, no strings attached.

The retrofit process for the city of Beverly Hills begins with an assessment (Screening Form) of your multi-family property - a licensed engineer or architect will assess your property and submit the Screening Form to the city, who will then determine if the building is in the scope of Ordinance 18-O-1767 to require a retrofit.

Once the city of Beverly Hills determines if your soft-story building building requires a seismic retrofit, you'll need to hire a licensed structural engineer to design and develop a set of plans with a retrofit solution to submit to the city. Once the plans are approved, construction can begin. 

You'll need an engineer, architect,  or general contractor to develop a retrofit design that will conform with the engineering requirements established Ordinance 18-I-1767. The plans will include some type of structural modification to the building using shear walls, cantilevered columns, or a steel moment frame.