Robert Kotler may be one of the most prominent cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills, yet he is seriously considering sharing offices with another doctor to save money.

Why? Because of a 20 percent rent hike on his North Bedford Drive office in the heart of the town’s Golden Triangle. He believes that stems from a city proposal to limit new medical office space, which is giving landlords leverage to boost rents.

He believes if rents become “unbearable,” a number of Beverly Hills doctors will become office roommates.

“They are medical tenements, offices with five or six doctors,” said Kotler, who has authored a book and appeared on national TV programs. “The patients are not happy.”

A Beverly Hills address is coveted by plastic surgeons and other doctors who seek to draw patients worldwide. But city officials have decided that the industry has become too much of a good thing. Medical uses account for 21 percent of Beverly Hills’ office market, a far greater percentage than many cities.

Officials were toying with setting specific limits on additional space, but last month planners rejected the idea of a cap. Instead, the latest proposal would essentially give city officials a hefty dose of discretion in approving individual projects.

“There is a fine balance between having a city that is almost saturated in medical and one that looks at the greater picture of what we want in our city,” said Vice Mayor Barry Brucker. “This council member is sensitive to the issue of where we are putting medical.”

The proposal is for a so-called floating zone of medical office space. Developers would be required to get permission from the city to be accepted into the zone, according to a July report by planners.

In addition, a developer would need a conditional use permit from the Planning Commission – and possibly the City Council.

Such a permit requires certain findings. The developer would have to show that the project would not create “adverse impacts” to parking, traffic or pedestrians; would not result in an “overconcentration” of medical offices in the vicinity; and would leave room for retail or other commercial growth in the area, according to a draft of possible findings.

A Planning Commission committee is studying the matter and is scheduled to make a recommendation as early as Oct. 14.

While the proposal would clearly benefit existing medical office landlords by creating a shortage of such space, it may deter developers of new buildings by adding complex regulations.

“We’d love to be in Beverly Hills, but they are just too tough to develop in,” said Robert Held, chief executive of Held Properties Inc., a Century City developer that built two Beverly Hills medical office buildings before selling them in the 1980s.

“They aren’t amenable to doing anything that has medical related to it. The city requires a tremendous amount of planning.”

The city’s stance toward new medical office space already has resulted in fireworks.

Earlier this year, the Kobor Family Trust, the owner of an office building under construction at Robertson and Wilshire boulevards, filed a lawsuit seeking $40 million in damages after the city rejected its plans to convert it to medical office use. A ruling from a judge is expected by year’s end.

Triple net leases

Meanwhile, Kotler finds it hard to stomach his rent increase when office rents for nonmedical uses around the city have fallen by as much as 30 percent. He and other doctors said the increases are particularly troubling at a time when their business is down, with patients forgoing everything from elective surgery to routine physicals to save money.

He said that his landlord, G&L Realty Corp., has told him that rent for his 2,800-square-foot office would effectively be $17,000 a month.

Kotler currently pays $14,000 per month on a full-service gross basis. The doctor said G&L would like to convert his deal to a triple net lease, which means that he could be responsible for paying insurance, taxes, maintenance and possibly utility costs.

“We don’t feel very good about having that kind of increase; there is no justification for that in this economy,” Kotler said. “We smell a bad odor here.”

G&L, which owns five medical office buildings in the city, declined all comment.

LeFrak Organization Inc., a New York-based family real estate investment company that owns a medical building at 120 S. Spalding Drive, isn’t raising rents. But it hasn’t lowered them.

“Rents for regular old office space came down about 30 percent to where they are now. Rents for medical space never went down at all. They remained at 2007 levels,” said Managing Director Jamie LeFrak, noting the building is nearly 100 percent leased.

LeFrak also said it’s not worth taking a side over the issue of whether to curtail future medical development because it wouldn’t affect his company. Although, he believes it is probably a bad idea for Beverly Hills because restrictions could spur new doctors to establish their practices elsewhere.

One doctor who already has left the city is ophthalmologist Robert Sacks, who faced a sharp rent increase at the G&L-owned building in the Golden Triangle at 435 N. Roxbury Drive where he had his offices for nearly 20 years. (The triangle is bordered by Canon Drive, and Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards.)

Sacks said that during negotiations of a lease extension in 2009, G&L said that it wanted to convert his full-service gross deal to a triple net lease, which would have effectively made the lease for his 1,150-square-foot space balloon from $4.25 per square foot per month to $5.25. He found it galling because not all of the medical office buildings in the area are fully occupied. (There is a 12 percent medical office vacancy rate in the city’s 24 Class A medical office buildings, according to CoStar, a commercial real estate data provider.)

Hunt Barnett, a broker with L.A. Realty Partners, believes that the push by some landlords to convert deals to triple net leases isn’t unreasonable given the high costs of operating the space.

“The trend to a more net approach is more in line with paying for what you use. Most newer medical office buildings would be built and set up that way from the get-go,” he said.

Still, Sacks is left with a bitter taste.

“I don’t understand how they could be really greedy and not only increase the rent and (also) switch to triple net when there isn’t 99 percent occupancy,” said Sacks, who has since relocated to 1125 S. Beverly Drive just outside the city limits in Los Angeles.

“Maybe they are doing it with the notion that there is going to be this (restriction),” he said.