In L.A.'s nucleus, changing Times

But in fact, wrote author Joan Didion in the New Yorker, "a great deal of Los Angeles as it appears today derived from this impulse to improve Chandler property. . . . Union Station and the Los Angeles Civic Center and the curiosity known as Olvera Street are where they are because Harry Chandler wanted to develop the north end of downtown, where the Times building and many other of his downtown holdings lay."

But downtown began to decline after the suburban boom that followed World War II. For a while, The Times seemed immune, growing into one of the largest and most respected newspapers in the nation.

Over the decades, four more buildings were added to the original Times building. The newest of those buildings, added by architect William L. Pereira in the 1970s, harbors such a deep chasm of public disdain that when the urban website Curbed L.A. hosted its first "Ugliest Building" contest last year, Times Mirror Square came in second.

In the early 1990s, executives at what was then Times Mirror spent two years considering a move out of the downtown headquarters, and were on the verge of moving the company about five blocks to the southwest. But they decided to instead renovate and retrofit the aging complex -- a process that is ongoing.

Portions of the building emptied after Tribune Co. bought the paper in 2000 -- so much so that the complex has become a popular location for filming.

In an e-mail Wednesday to employees, Tribune Chief Executive Sam Zell said that the Times' headquarters, 750,000 square feet of space, is "underutilized." He continued that "it's in our best interests to maximize the value of all our assets."

That decision struck some developers and observers as a sound business decision.

Carol Schatz, president of the downtown business improvement district, said that in the last decade, "property values [in downtown] have at least doubled."

"This is not a shocker," she said. "The only thing that is important to me is that The Times stays downtown."

A change in the city law allowing adaptive reuse of underutilized buildings launched a conversion craze downtown in 1999. Since then, a number of headquarters buildings have undergone dramatic conversions. The former Herald Examiner newspaper building -- once housing The Times' arch rival -- is also supposed to be converted into a mix of housing and retail, although a shaky real estate market has delayed that project.