Home Care In Beverly Hills, CA

LOS ANGELES, CA — A former pawnshop owner on Tuesday was sentenced to community service after he admitted to lying to investigators about his connection to stolen Andy Warhol art.

Glenn Bednarsh, 59, formerly of Beverly Hills, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI in federal court in downtown Los Angeles in September. On Tuesday, he was sentenced to six weeks of community service as part of his probationary sentence.

Bednarsh knowingly bought a stolen Warhol print depicting Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin in February 2021 for $6,000. Bednarsh asked co-conspirator Brian Alec Light to help him sell the stolen trial proof. Light then contacted the Beverly Hills office of an auction house based in Dallas about selling the art, according to federal prosecutors.

Light, 59, of Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in November 2024 to one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods. He was sentenced last month to probation and restitution of about $1,915.

Prosecutors don't believe Light nor Bednarsh stole the Warhol print — a trial proof depicting Lenin and was print number 44 of 46 total by Warhol — in early 2022 from a home in Los Angeles County.

But Light played a role in trying to sell the ill-gotten print worth about $170,000, according to prosecutors.

Authorities have not publicly identified any suspects in the theft.

After being burglarized, the victim informed law enforcement of its theft as well as the original gallery in West Hollywood that sold him the artwork, according to investigators.

"Days after the theft, the thief brought the artwork to a pawnshop, which purchased it. The pawnshop’s owner contacted Light for help selling the artwork, which Light knew was stolen," prosecutors allege. "Light contacted an auction house to sell the print within weeks of its theft. Light told the pawnshop owner to drop off the Warhol at the auction house in Beverly Hills so that it could be transported to Dallas for inspection and sale, which the pawnshop owner did."

The art was slated for auction in Dallas a few months later.

"An employee of the auction house in Dallas reached out to the gallery in West Hollywood for its opinion of the piece," the justice department said in a written statement. "The gallery immediately recognized the piece as the stolen piece of art. As a result, the gallery notified the auction house of its stolen nature and notified the FBI."

Later in March 2021, when FBI agents began inquiring about the stolen Warhol art, Light lied to them by saying he bought it at a Culver City garage sale for $18,000 and provided a fake receipt, he admitted.

According to Bednarsh's plea agreement, he admitted having lied to FBI agents by telling them Light asked him to store the Warhol for him and that he agreed to do so out of friendship and not for financial gain.

As part of his plea agreement, Light forfeited the stolen artwork retrieved by law enforcement.

City News Service contributed to this report.

Inside the logistical, creative, and culinary choreography behind the 2026 Globes

Three days before the Golden Globes, the Beverly Hilton feels closer to an active construction site than the epicenter of Hollywood glamour. Power tools echo through unfinished corridors, concrete dust lingers in the air, and traffic crawls along Wilshire Boulevard amid cones and barricades. It is loud, imperfect, and visibly unfinished. There is no immediate sign that, within days, this same location will host the most photographed arrivals of awards season and transform into what insiders still call Hollywood’s biggest party.

This tension between disorder and elegance has always defined the Golden Globes. For more than eighty years, the ceremony has thrived on contrasts. It is the most social and free-flowing stop of awards season, less formal than the Oscars, more unpredictable than the Emmys, and famously alive. Champagne flows. Speeches wander. The room breathes.

This year, however, that contrast is no longer metaphorical. It is physical.

Speaking exclusively to Los Angeles, director and show runner Glenn Weiss does not hesitate when asked what makes this year different.

“The biggest challenge is not creative,” he says, looking around the active renovation. “It’s literal. It’s what’s left of this building.”

For decades, the Golden Globes red carpet unfolded inside the Beverly Hilton’s long corridors and covered walkways. Those spaces are now gone. Renovation erased them entirely. Rather than replicate the past, the production team chose reinvention.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Weiss says with a laugh. “We had a red carpet in a certain place here for years, and then the construction just took it away. So we had to come up with something different.”

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Different this year means bold, exposed, and unapologetically ambitious. The red carpet moves completely outdoors, stretching nearly five hundred feet along Wilshire Boulevard. What might have felt risky has become the defining visual of the ceremony.

At the center of that reinvention are production designers Jitter Garcia and Kyle Absolom, who reveal exclusively to LA Magazine how the new arrival experience was built from the ground up.

“We knew the renovation was happening more than a year ago,” they explain. “So we started thinking about this long before anything was built.”

Their answer is a sculptural arrival staircase that replaces the traditional flat press backdrop. Instead of stopping at one mark, talent will descend step by step, creating multiple natural photo moments as they move.

“We wanted it to feel like motion, not posing,” Garcia explains. “Almost like a runway.”

Every detail was calculated.

“We were very intentional about the measurements of the steps,” Garcia says. “We were thinking about the skirts, the trains, the heels.”

Testing was hands-on. Garcia walked the unfinished stairs herself in heels and different outfits, watching how fabric moved and how bodies adjusted.

“It felt kind of silly,” she admits. “But it actually helped a lot.”

Even after completion, the design was not locked.

“We were done,” Absalom says. “And then we looked at it again and thought it might not read correctly on camera. So we redid the whole thing.”

To avoid surprises on the night, the duo invited stylists for a private preview.

“I think it was really appreciated,” Garcia says. “Now they know exactly what their clients are getting into.”

As the spectacle unfolds outside, precision takes over inside. The Golden Globes kitchen operates more like a broadcast control room than a restaurant.

Chef Nobu Matsuhisa speaks to Los Angeles with calm certainty.

“We will serve around twelve hundred plates,” he says. “Everything has to be exact.”

Signature dishes return alongside subtle updates.

“Last year everyone loved it,” he explains. “This year, I made a little switch. Sushi, people always like this.”

An additional sushi bar remains active off camera throughout the night, keeping the flow uninterrupted.

“Most of the people here I already know,” Matsuhisa adds. “They come to my restaurants. I’m very comfortable.”

Back on the production side, Weiss brings a rare perspective. He has directed some of the highest-pressure live broadcasts in television, including the Oscars and the Emmys. When asked by LA Magazine whether the spontaneity of the Golden Globes scares him, especially in an era where unpredictable moments have gone viral for all the wrong reasons, he smiles.

“The spontaneity is exactly what makes the Globes the Globes,” he says. “But yes, it’s also the thing you have to respect the most.”

He explains that, unlike other ceremonies, the Golden Globes cannot be overcontrolled.

“If you try to lock everything down, you lose the energy,” Weiss says. “You have to let the room breathe. You have to let things happen.”

Still, live television is unforgiving.

“The moments that keep you on edge are the ones you can’t plan for,” he says. “Transitions. Movement. Getting people from one place to another when the clock is ticking. That’s where live television really happens.”

Beyond logistics, this year carries deeper weight for the Golden Globes as an institution. In recent years, the ceremony faced public scrutiny and uncertainty. Under the leadership of its new president, Helen Hoehne, a German-born journalist with an international media background, the organization entered a period of recalibration and renewal.

With a renewed focus on credibility, transparency, and global relevance, and with the support of Penske Media Corporation, the Golden Globes moved into a new chapter. The goal was not to change the soul of the show, but to strengthen it.

That balance remains central to Weiss’s approach.

“The Globes historically is not a show that has an in memoriam,” he explains. “We’re trying to keep the vibe in a different place.”

Acknowledgment, he notes, is never simple.

“When you start making special mention of one, there are many others we’ve lost as well. We want to be very conscious of that and protect the tone.”

That tone was set in motion this week with the official red carpet rollout, marking the beginning of the 83rd Annual Golden Globes party circuit.

By Sunday night, the drills will be silent, traffic rerouted, the timing will land, and the party will begin.

That is the magic of the Golden Globes. Not just an awards show, but a meticulously engineered celebration that transforms disruption into spectacle and turns a construction zone into Hollywood’s biggest party.

“Hollywood’s Party of the Year®” will air live on CBS and stream on Paramount+ on Sunday, January 11, 2026, at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT.

The land below the Beverly Hills flagship store of luxury retailer Neiman Marcus has been sold to a New York investor as the owners of the department store chain sell property to pay debts.

Neiman Marcus, which has occupied the 9700 Wilshire Boulevard store since it opened in 1979, will continue to serve customers there as a tenant.

“We made the strategic decision to sell the land beneath the Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills store and enter into a long-term lease with the new owner,” said a spokesperson for Saks Global. “This opportunistic real estate transaction does not impact our day-to-day operations. We remain committed to serving our loyal Beverly Hills customers.”

Saks Global, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Saks Off 5th and Bergdorf Goodman, sold the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus site for an undisclosed price.

The new owner of the property on the edge of the city’s prestigious Golden Triangle is Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., a private real estate investment firm owned by Ben Ashkenazy.

Ashkenazy also owns the former Barneys building on Wilshire Boulevard that is now occupied by Saks Fifth Avenue.

“This strategic acquisition significantly expands Ashkenazy’s presence in Beverly Hills and reinforces the firm’s focus on irreplaceable, best-in-class retail assets located in globally recognized luxury corridors,” the company said in a statement.

Executives at Saks Global have signaled plans to shore up cash by offloading stores, or raising emergency financing.

It could also part with a stake in luxury retail chain Bergdorf Goodman to help pay off debts and reinvest in its core retail business, real estate data provider CoStar said.

The company faces a $100-million debt payment deadline at the end of December and is considering Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a last resort, Bloomberg said. The scramble comes a year after Saks Global purchased Neiman Marcus in a $2.7-billion deal.

The Beverly Hills retail property market is still one of the most robust in the country, said real estate broker Jay Luchs of Newmark. He was not involved in the Neiman Marcus property sale, but has brokered sales and leases of luxury stores in Southern California for more than two decades.

“This is probably the best it’s ever been in Beverly Hills,” he said, with “essentially nothing available” on Rodeo Drive for merchants in search of store space and demand climbing on nearby streets such as Wilshire Boulevard.

Some top-shelf brands are making their stores larger, and luxury brands, including LVMH, Chanel, Hermes and Richemont, are buying their stores instead of renting them, he said.

“They don’t do that unless they’re making a tremendous amount of money and want to be there forever,” Luchs said, “and they realize that Los Angeles and Beverly Hills is a very important market for them.”

Saks Global has sold a Neiman Marcus flagship in one of the nation's top retail hubs in an apparent move to free up capital to pay down its debt.

New York City–based Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. purchased the 184,000-square-foot Neiman Marcus store at 9700 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills, California, from Saks for an undisclosed price.

Executives at Saks Global, the parent company of Neiman Marcus, have signaled plans to shore up cash by offloading stores, or even parting with a stake in luxury retail chain Bergdorf Goodman, to help pay off debts and reinvest in its core retail business. The company reportedly faces a $100 million debt payment deadline at the end of December.

The buyer, headed by billionaire developer Ben Ashkenazy, now calls itself the largest retail landlord in Beverly Hills, with 350,000 square feet of owned space in the glitzy district. The firm — with a $12 billion portfolio of 15 million square feet across 100 buildings in the U.S. and Canada — announced in June it plans to deploy $750 million over the next two years into best-in-class retail, hospitality and distressed debt.

Ashkenazy Acquisitions "continues to demonstrate an uncanny ability to close on iconic assets with unparalleled speed,” said a statement from Jay Luchs, executive vice chairman at Newmark, who represented the buyer in a deal that happened in seven days.

The sale comes almost exactly one year after Saks Global purchased Neiman Marcus in a $2.7 billion deal. In the months since, department stores have had to contend with inflationary concerns among consumers and competition from sellers of secondhand wares.

Still, U.S. retail real estate transactions are picking up, with sales volume climbing 10% in the past year to $70 billion, according to CoStar data. In Los Angeles, retail property sales have climbed 25% to $4 billion in the past year.

The Beverly Hills deal is the latest high-profile example of Saks selling off properties.

The company in September sold a Neiman Marcus store at The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano, Texas, and is participating in a potential redevelopment of its downtown Dallas flagship. The company still owns or has stakes in 30 properties across the U.S., according to CoStar data, but it is considering possible deals, records indicate.

Meanwhile, Saks Global last month announced plans to close 10 of its Saks Off 5th outlet stores.

While Saks Global is on a disposition spree, Ashkenazy is in expansion mode.

In August, Ashkenazy paid $72 million for an open-air shopping center in the New York City borough of Queens, and this month it paid $60 million for a 580,000-square-foot shopping center southwest of Chicago.

The Beverly Hills deal expands Ashkenazy’s footprint in one of the world’s most expensive luxury retail corridors.

The firm now controls roughly 350,000 square feet of retail space in Beverly Hills, including a Saks Fifth Avenue women's collection building a few doors away at 9570 Wilshire Blvd. that it acquired in 2021 and the Beverly Connection open-air center that it bought in 2014, and where it recently landed a Bloomingdale’s Outlet as a tenant.

Ashkenazy’s record has not been without turbulence.

Its former Barneys New York flagship at 660 Madison Ave. in Manhattan has remained vacant since that retailer’s bankruptcy filing in 2019. Ashkenazy also sold its long-term lease at Boston’s Faneuil Hall in 2024 after years of operational challenges, and it lost control of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station following a lender-initiated foreclosure.

The transaction lands as Beverly Hills’ luxury retail market undergoes a broader reset. Developers and brands are leaning into experiential retail even as high-end spending slows and vacancies inch higher.

The most ambitious example is One Beverly Hills, a $10 billion mixed-use project that will bring 200,000 square feet of retail and dining alongside hotels, residences and 10 acres of botanical gardens.

The project broke ground last year and is targeting a phased opening starting in 2027, ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

Meanwhile, LVMH has proposed a sprawling Louis Vuitton flagship at Rodeo Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard, complete with restaurants, a brand museum and a rooftop garden designed by Frank Gehry.

Despite the momentum, headwinds remain. Retail vacancy in Beverly Hills rose to 8% from 7% a year ago, above the U.S. average of 4.3%, according to CoStar data.

Even so, Rodeo Drive remains one of the world’s most expensive shopping streets, with average annual rents reaching $1,100 per square foot in 2024, second only to New York’s Fifth Avenue.

The latest big-ticket office sale in Beverly Hills — the ritzy retail corridor in greater Los Angeles — shows that athletic retailer Alo is on a shopping spree of its own.

The brand, the maker of matching workout sets that have built a cult-like following, this week dropped $82 million for the Beverly Hills Gateway building along famed Wilshire Boulevard, according to people with knowledge of the deal. The more than 131,000-square-foot property is located a few blocks from another building the company acquired last month, which was also one of the priciest office sales to close in the Los Angeles area this year.

The price tag for Alo's latest Beverly Hills deal underscores the brand's willingness to pay top dollar to scoop up properties aimed at bolstering its corporate presence and future growth. It recently shelled out $90 million, or $1,085 per square foot, for the nearly 82,900-square-foot La Peer Building along Wilshire Boulevard to house a larger corporate headquarters.

It's unclear what Alo plans to do with its latest office purchase. The deal comes as a spectrum of buyers — including owner-users such as Alo, as well as institutional powerhouses — are stepping up their investments in and outside of Beverly Hills.

Office investment sales nationally surged nearly 60% in the 12-month period as of October when compared to the same period last year, CoStar data shows. Private buyers and owner-users "have made up the lion's share of acquisitions" since 2023, according to CoStar's latest report, though institutional buyers are increasingly making their presence known.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles, Riot Games purchased its longtime headquarters from landlord Hudson Pacific Properties for $150 million earlier this month. Outside of Los Angeles, Apple snapped up a pair of Silicon Valley office buildings near its global headquarters for $216 million.

Alo did not immediately respond to CoStar News' requests for comment.

The sale is another pricey anchor for the Beverly Hills office market, which has emerged as a rare source of momentum for an otherwise stagnant Los Angeles region.

Beverly Hills "continues to see accelerated investment momentum, far outpacing other submarkets in Greater Los Angeles," Mike Condon, one of the Cushman & Wakefield brokers who helped represent seller 3D Investments in the Gateway deal, said in a LinkedIn post.

Investors have collectively spent upward of $500 million on office purchases in the Beverly Hills area over the past year, according to CoStar data, already significantly more than the $350 million that closed over the prior 12-month period.

Kilroy Realty, for example, spent $205 million to acquire the 290,000-square-foot building at 345 N. Maple Drive, marking one of the priciest Los Angeles area deals of the year and the real estate investment trust's return to the capital markets after a pandemic-era retreat. And online retailer Fashion Nova paid $118 million, or more than $675 per square foot, last year for a nearby office property that also serves as its headquarters.

Alo's ramped-up acquisition streak echoes the company's own trajectory over the past couple of decades.

The Los Angeles-born company, founded in 2007, has evolved from a yoga apparel startup into a global lifestyle brand with thousands of stores around the world and a booming digital wellness platform. Its rise has coincided with a surge in U.S. athleisure sales, which Dimension Market Research estimates will grow from the more than $154.5 billion reported last year to nearly $339 billion by 2033.

The company was last estimated to have a value of about $10 billion in late 2023, according to Reuters, with 2022 sales exceeding $1 billion, or triple compared to the previous year.

CoStar's Brannon Boswell contributed to this report.