Top drawer

Set on Pershing Square, each of the two towers of condominiums, 43 and 76 stories high, will offer outdoor space as well as smart-home technology and design features. The building will house a five- star hotel, a health spa, a lecture hall, a screening room and two swimming pools with cabanas and fire pits as well as a street-level retail floor.

Working plans are for the towers to house 10 penthouses in all -- from 1,200 to 4,500 square feet -- that will be designed to take full advantage of the expansive downtown-to-the-ocean views and can be fully customized.

"It will be like picking out a lot and building your own home somewhere," Nelson said, "something that will appeal to this market."

The penthouse units are on sale for $1.7 million to $9.5 million.

One downtown developer decided not to push the company's penthouses into stratospheric price ranges.

Rhonda Slavik, director of sales and marketing for the South Group, which has built three South Park high-rises, said that the developer could have combined two of its premier penthouses in Evo, its most upscale building, but chose not to.

"We wanted our building to have more of a neighborhood feel and didn't think that having a $20-million property here would fit in with the artists and professors who are moving downtown," she said.

Along the Wilshire Corridor, however, there is a more established luxury-condominium market, and many penthouses command high prices. Among the most expensive on the market is an 8,000-square-foot, two-floor unit offering "unsurpassed elegance" (according to its brochure) at the Wilshire for $11.5 million.

The level of service becomes apparent immediately upon entering the circular cobblestone courtyard from Wilshire Boulevard. A uniformed corps of white-gloved attendants is on the scene to whisk cars to the parking lot, unload groceries and packages and smilingly open the grand doors. Privacy can be maintained even in the elevators, because they are key activated and open directly onto the units.

At the penthouse, visitors are met with stunning views of Bel-Air and an elegant gilt- and crystal-coated two-story grand salon. Interior rooms are laden with elaborate moldings, marble fireplaces, 19th century antiques and views of the Westside, the ocean and downtown from several different angles. The unit also offers a screening room large enough for the extended family, an in-unit elevator and elegant his-and-her dressing rooms.