Downtown Los Angeles

THERE is no single block that neatly sums up the way downtown Los Angeles is being transformed, condo by condo and loft by loft, into a place with real residential character. Just as there are many downtowns -- South Park, Little Tokyo, the historic core, skid row -- there are many architectural responses to the idea of downtown living in this city. But three residential developments on a stretch of Industrial Street, just off 7th Street near the L.A. River, come pretty close.

With work set to begin soon on a $1-billion luxury hotel in downtown Los Angeles, developer Korean Air revealed some details about the tower that is expected to dramatically alter the city's skyline. The skyscraper will be the second-tallest structure in Southern California at 70 stories, only slightly shorter than the US Bank Tower office building, said Yang Ho Cho, the chairman of Korean Air. The design is still a work in progress, but guests are expected to be whisked by high-speed elevators to the lobby on the 70th floor, where they will check in. The top floor will also have a restaurant, bar and infinity swimming pool.

Los Angeles developer Rob Maguire has always been a big booster of downtown. But which downtown? Maguire finds himself in an awkward position as the cities of Los Angeles and Pasadena compete to attract the prestigious Art Center College of Design to their respective downtowns. Art Center, which has been located in the Linda Vista section of Pasadena for more than 20 years, is looking to move all or part of its operations and nearly 2,000 students and staff as part of an ambitious expansion.

Tens of thousands of cycling, hockey and basketball fans will converge at Staples Center in a weekend packed with post-season games and the final stage of the 2012 Amgen Tour of California - events that authorities are warning will close streets and delay traffic in the downtown Los Angeles area. The biggest wrench in traffic will be crowds overlapping for the Kings game and the bike race Sunday. Street closures were scheduled to begin after the Lakers game Saturday night - along Figueroa Street from Pico to Olympic boulevards and on Chick Hearn Court/11th Street from Flower Avenue to Georgia Street - when two pedestrian bridges will be erected so Kings fans can cross the bike route Sunday morning for Game 4 of the NHL Western conference finals.

Los Angeles officials have set aside $25 million and negotiated a complicated land swap with the state as part of a bold plan to transform an entire city block in downtown Los Angeles into a public plaza. But few people outside of the downtown establishment seem to know about the plan to create a new focal point for public life in central Los Angeles.

As the summer heat envelops a Los Angeles morning, messenger Luis Alfaro rests atop his Schwinn mountain bike on a downtown sidewalk and explains the perils of bicycle delivery. "Sometimes drivers yell, 'Hey, biker, get out of my way,' " says Alfaro, a 29-year-old messenger for Red Arrow Bonded Messenger Corp. "But I just keep on smiling."

"Merry Christmas. Hats off please!" It was a greeting repeated hundreds of times Saturday by men in dark suits signifying passage from a world of filthy concrete and predatory faces to a sanctuary of warm food and loving care.

Trizec Properties Inc., owner of more than 50 office buildings in the U.S., bought a 52-story tower in downtown Los Angeles for $356.7 million, increasing its holdings in the area by 30%. The seller of the Figueroa at Wilshire tower was a joint venture of Houston-based Hines and Germany's Deutsche Immobilien Fonds. The 1-million-square-foot building expands Trizec's Los Angeles office portfolio to 4.5 million square feet, the Chicago-based company said Thursday. The tower is 87% occupied.

The 19-story Wilshire Bixel building in Los Angeles was purchased for about $24.5 million by Santa Monica-based Kennedy-Wilson International Inc. The sale was part of the company's plans to expand its holding of downtown Los Angeles real estate, where it now owns and operates about 1.3 million square feet of space, a company spokesman said. The Wilshire Bixel building, west of the Harbor Freeway, was sold by American Trading R/E Properties, which is a tenant in the building.

In a boost for the struggling downtown Los Angeles office market, fast-growing Aames Financial Corp. said Thursday that it will move its headquarters into a gleaming Bunker Hill skyscraper, one of the largest corporate relocations into the area in recent years. The 15-year lease for seven floors of space at Two California Plaza will bring an estimated 700 workers to downtown Los Angeles, which has lost numerous corporate headquarters over the years as a result of mergers and cutbacks.

While the legislature in Minnesota continued to work on a solution to keep the Vikings, AEG on Tuesday unveiled its latest vision for an NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. Two weeks remain in the public-comment period of AEG's environmental impact report on the concept, and the company hopes to have its approvals in place by late summer, with the goal of luring a football team back to L.A. next spring. AEG's is one of two competing stadium proposals, with the other in City of Industry.

Numerous streets in downtown Los Angeles and beyond will be closed Tuesday for May Day marches. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the following streets downtown will be affected, beginning as early as 7 a.m. and continuing until 7:30 p.m: •Broadway between 11th and Temple streets •Olympic Boulevard between Hill and Main streets •9th between Hill and Broadway •8th between Spring and Broadway ...

MPG Office Trust Inc., the largest office landlord in downtown Los Angeles, eked out a first-quarter profit propelled by property sales and debt forgiveness. The Los Angeles real estate investment trust — which also owns buildings in Glendale, Pasadena and Orange County — stuck to its strategy of letting go of properties that were heavily encumbered with debt. MPG finished the quarter that ended March 31 with a profit of $5.2 million, or 10 cents a share, compared with a loss of $39.5 million, or 81 cents a share, in the same period of 2011.

Former executives of office landlord MPG Office Trust Inc. have launched their own property company with the purchase of a landmark Los Angeles office building. Nelson and Christopher Rising of Rising Realty Partners expect their acquisition of Pacific Center at 6th and Olive streets to close Monday. Terms of the purchase from Alliance Commercial Partners were not revealed, but experts familiar with downtown real estate prices value the deal at $60 million. The new owners will change the name of the complex to the PacMutual Building, in keeping with origins of the Beaux Arts-style complex that can be traced to railroad tycoons Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins.

As cars whizzed by and trucks honked, two dozen members of the East Side Riders from Watts slowly pedaled their cruisers up Central Avenue early Sunday. Their destination was seven miles away: CicLAvia, a rare opportunity to enjoy 10 miles of car-free streets in downtown Los Angeles and beyond and to soak up the spirit of what turned out to be a citywide block party. "Watts in the house!" boomed a disc jockey as the group pulled into the African American Firefighter Museum and joined an estimated 100,000 people who biked, walked or skated block after block without having to dodge a car or bus. "Right now they're going to get a chance to ride the streets without cars interfering with their leisurely bike ride," John Jones said of his fellow Riders members.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will unveil a $16-million bike-share program Sunday that aims to put thousands of bicycles at hundreds of rental kiosks across the city. Initial plans are to add 400 stations and 4,000 bicycles over the next 18 to 24 months in areas around downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Playa del Rey, Westwood and Venice Beach. The private investment from Bike Nation will not need any city money, according to the mayor's office and the company. Bike Nation has agreed to a minimum contract of 10 years.

Once upon a time, when downtown Los Angeles was known as the Wall Street of the West, the old Federal Reserve Bank building sturdily symbolized the city's burgeoning importance as a financial center. When it was built in 1930 at the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Olive Street, the five-story granite-clad structure embodied the strength of the federal government at a time when public confidence had been shaken by stock market plunges and bank runs.

The former home of the now-defunct University Club in downtown Los Angeles has been sold for $5.65 million to New York-based Gateway Realty, which plans to convert the building for use by telecommunications businesses. The six-story, 110,000-square-foot property at 630 W. 6th St. is near the underground fiber-optic cable system that has led many telecom firms to lease space and install electronic switching systems recently in the downtown area.

Nearly 20 years after Los Angeles was shaken by one of the worst outbreaks of civil unrest in U.S. history, residents say the city is safer and relations between its racial and ethnic groups are significantly better than they were in 1992. Most also say L.A. is unlikely to see riots in the coming years like those that swept the city after the 1992 acquittals of four Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney G. King, a new report shows. The survey by the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University suggests, however, that many Angelenos are relatively pessimistic about the city's overall direction.

First published on Jan. 30, 2011. Revised and expanded in January 2012. The tourists think big. Arriving in Southern California, they expect to conquer Disneyland and Hollywood, perhaps on the same day, in between the surfing and snowboarding. Then they get stuck in traffic. Then come the recriminations, the tears, the vows to visit an island next time. The locals think small. Tracing tight little loops between home and work, they dodge freeways and alien neighborhoods.