Downtown Los Angeles

Tom LaBonge was 20 when he first stepped onto the elevator at Los Angeles City Hall and ascended 27 floors to the observation room. At the time, the 28-story building still towered over most of downtown Los Angeles. The skyscraper boom that would transform the skyline was just beginning in 1974. "I will always remember being impressed about seeing downtown from above," LaBonge, now a Los Angeles councilman, recalls of taking in the view for the first time.

The first condominium project in downtown Los Angeles to be built from the ground up in more than 20 years is under construction as a burst of residential development begins to transform once-desolate blocks around Staples Center. The $250-million project at the southwest corner of 11th Street and Grand Avenue eventually will include as many as 750 for-sale properties in townhouses and high-rise towers, developers said.

The cornerstone project of Los Angeles' efforts to convert downtown buildings to residential lofts could be sold at auction unless its developer pays nearly $900,000 owed to a contractor. The potential sale of the 240-unit Old Bank District project follows the arbitration of a dispute between the project's main contractor, Prudential Management Co., and developer Tom Gilmore, who said Monday his buildings will not have to be sold.

Residential development is surging in downtown Los Angeles with thousands of potential homeowners migrating to the city's center, according to a report to be released today by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. The study paints a bright economic forecast for downtown, suggesting that the area is in the middle of a housing boom, with 16 residential projects in the works -- the bulk of which are older office buildings being converted into hip loft units.

Back in the 1960s, the Music Center on Grand Avenue was supposed to revive downtown Los Angeles. A decade later, the Convention Center 12 blocks away was going to be the draw. In the late '80s, billions of dollars of skyscraping office towers were sure to do the trick. None of them delivered. Then, two years ago, Jon and Jolene Fisher moved out of a house in Van Nuys and rented an airy loft in a 99-year-old building on Spring Street.

A Brentwood-based developer who demolished the last 19th century home on Bunker Hill without a permit will be barred from building on the site for five years, according to Los Angeles city officials. David Keim, the chief code enforcement officer at the city's Department of Building and Safety, said he believed that it was the first time his agency had invoked the so-called scorched-earth ordinance to halt construction on the site of an illegally demolished structure.

Though the artist known as Gronk has lived in the same funky, baroquely attired Spring Street loft for the last 14 years, you could say that he is really, at heart, a street person.

The Los Angeles City Council is poised to adopt a massive redevelopment district for downtown Los Angeles that would create thousands of new homes--and possibly ease the way for construction of a stadium for a professional football team. Local business officials and others hail the plan as key to revitalizing downtown. However, advocates for the poor are concerned that the proposal will lead to gentrification and skyrocketing housing prices.

With the prospect of a new NFL stadium hovering overhead like the Goodyear blimp, the Los Angeles City Council approved a $2.4-billion downtown redevelopment plan Wednesday that promises new housing, jobs and social services in blighted sections of the city's historic core.