High Rise

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

Sacramento authorities are investigating the death of a man whose body was found dangling outside a downtown building. At some point Monday morning, it appears the man tied a rope around himself, authorities said. However, he was tied in seated position like a rappeller. The rope was tied off with a window washing anchor, and fire officials believe that that anchor could have held his weight. But they don't think he was a window washer. Around 7:45 a.m., a person in another building reported seeing the man hanging near 12th and K streets.

Television and radio host Larry King is among celebrity buyers at the Carlyle Residences, a newly built high-rise along the Wilshire corridor that will celebrate its opening Saturday. The condominium that King purchased has three bedrooms and 4 1/2 bathrooms in 3,535 square feet. The asking price of a comparable unit is $4.4 million. Other Hollywood luminaries to purchase at the Carlyle include actor Bruce Willis and Irv Weintraub, former chief operating officer of William Morris.

Sure, the condo was small, only 500 square feet. But it offered the chance for "resort-style" living in an Orange County high-rise overflowing with amenities: "delicious gourmet meals," housekeeping and access to a library, game rooms and fitness centers. The listing price: just $1. It seemed like that proverbial deal too good to be true. And in a way, it was. After being listed three months ago, the condo in Laguna Woods Village has been taken off the market. Cathy Flores, a real estate agent at Century 21 Award who listed the property, said the condo - in a building of 311 units - was the last piece of a trust that the owners were trying to unload, and they thought they could give someone a good deal.

The latest addition to the downtown Los Angeles skyline is expected to debut with a big splash -- make that a big flash -- tonight, when lights in the city's newest high-rise snap on for the first time. Owners of the 54-story Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott tower are rigging lights on the top 27 levels to flick on floor by floor in a rising wave to celebrate completion of the hotel, the last piece of the massive L.A. Live entertainment complex. The attention-grabbing stunt will cost about $100,000; by no means a pittance but still a fraction of the $2.5-billion overall cost of L.A. Live, which sits next to Staples Center and is already home to Nokia Theatre and other attractions.

Hollywood's tallest tower has shed its bones and skin -- and hopefully its reputation as the most cursed building in town. The slender 20-story Sunset Vine Tower that was Los Angeles' first modern skyscraper when it opened to international acclaim in 1963 at Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street has been converted into a luxury apartment building that will have its coming-out party Thursday. The skyscraper has been vacant since late 2001, when an electrical transformer exploded, plunging it into darkness and sending employees of 40 companies with offices there running down stairwells to safety.

Four floors of a downtown Los Angeles high-rise occupied by International Business Machines Corp. were flooded early Friday when an air conditioning water pipe burst. The floors in the Wells Fargo Center at 355 S. Grand Ave. were drenched with about 40,000 gallons of water, standing 2 inches deep in some places. The 1 1/2-inch pipe apparently ruptured on the 16th floor and the water flowed to the 15th, 14th and 12th floors before it was shut off, City Fire Department spokesman Jim Wells said.

Even as office space continues to multiply on North Brand Boulevard and Central Avenue, major Glendale employers already are looking for ways to move their huddled masses to less expensive quarters. The exodus mirrors an emerging phenomenon in which more prestigious companies are moving to Glendale's high-rise corridor as its reputation becomes more upscale. Fidelity Federal Bank, which has its headquarters at 600 N. Brand, set the lead 18 months ago.

Seeing James "Bubba" Stewart's likeness on magazine covers at newsstands is nothing new. The Florida teenager attracts attention as if he were a rock star instead of a motorcycle rider. Actually, calling Stewart "a motorcycle rider" is like calling Eric Clapton "a guitar player." But that's what Stewart does.

Singer-songwriter Paul Anka has purchased a unit at the Carlyle Residences, a newly built 24-story high-rise along the Wilshire corridor. The condominium that Anka bought has two bedrooms in 2,800 square feet. The sales price was not available, but the unit was listed at $3.6 million. Condos with the same floor plan are priced from $2.7 million to $5.3 million. The tower has 78 units with 2,700 to 5,000 square feet of living space. All have private elevator entrances and access to amenities, including concierge service, fitness facilities and a dining room.

As demand for downtown Los Angeles hotel rooms grows, plans have emerged for yet another high-rise inn near Staples Center. The announcement comes as hoteliers are scrambling to cash in on downtown's revival as a tourist destination and convention hub. Three large hotel projects are already underway and developers are prospecting for other potential sites in the neighborhood. Next on the horizon is the Renaissance Hotel, which will be more than 20 stories tall with 450 rooms and is slated to open in 2016 across the street from the L.A. Live entertainment complex.

A Canadian developer has started work on a $100-million luxury apartment building in downtown Los Angeles, the first of three high-rise residential complexes it plans to build in the booming neighborhood. Onni Group of Vancouver is erecting a 32-story tower on a former parking lot at the northeast corner of Olive and 9th streets. The site is next door to a well-known 12-story office building that opened in 1926 as the headquarters of Pacific National Bank. Onni's building, to be known as 888 Olive, will have 283 units - each with a private balcony - over street-level shops and restaurants.

A long-vacant 1920s office building in a recovering neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles has hit the market for almost $14 million as the city's historic core attracts new residents and investors. The 13-story Commercial Exchange Building - which was once cut in half vertically and shrunk in size - has been mostly empty for at least two decades, real estate broker Phillip Sample of CBRE Group Inc. said. In recent weeks, however, more than 100 potential buyers have toured the property at 416 W. 8th St. “We've got a lot of boutique hotels looking at this,” he said.

The Broad art museum being built next to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles will soon be flanked by another noteworthy structure: a $120-million apartment tower linked to the museum by a shared plaza. A groundbreaking ceremony will be held Thursday for the 19-story apartment complex that is part of the vaunted Grand Avenue Project launched more than a decade ago to transform barren blocks on Bunker Hill. Developer Related Cos., which recently completed the $56-million Grand Park between the Music Center and City Hall, is building the 271-unit apartment tower south of the Broad museum on Grand Avenue between 2nd and 3rd streets.

Moeller doesn't expect the height limits to be repealed "because people around the world would protest, just as they would if someone came up and said, 'I want to build a skyscraper along the Champs-Elysees.'" WASHINGTON - It blocked views. It shut out sunlight. The "great size" of the 12-story Cairo apartment building so angered the people of Washington, D.C., back in the 1890s that Congress eventually enacted a law that dramatically shaped the landscape of the nation's capital.

Leaders of Los Angeles County's embattled child welfare system believe they have solved one of their most intractable problems - finding a place for some of the most troubled foster children to lay down their heads at night. For more than a decade, thousands of children - - unruly teenagers, premature infants and others - have spent uneasy nights in a high-rise building's waiting room, cramped together without sufficient beds or food while social workers struggle to find them a place in foster care.

With a little optimistic measuring, the new listing on East 59th Street can be seen as slightly above average, in one respect, for apartments being sold these days in much of Manhattan: If you count the narrow "planting balcony," and perhaps part of the hallway, the two-bedroom unit overlooking the East River may be a sliver larger than the 1,366-square-foot average size of the condos and co-ops that change hands nowadays.

With hammers and crowbars they're knocking down old, atmospheric Rangoon, one of Asia's last reminders of the past, to make way for high-rise hotels and shopping centers. The 20th Century has finally caught up with Rangoon, where high-rise once meant the soaring spires of Buddhist pagodas, and tree-lined avenues were flanked by probably the largest collection of British colonial buildings in the world. Now, big chunks of the uniform urbanscape are being ripped out of the heart of Rangoon--now officially named Yangon--and the skyline has been pierced by several buildings approaching 20 stories.

THR Design Hollywood at the Century is the somewhat cryptic name for a simple concept: a rare look inside an exclusive, multimillion-dollar property. The design show house, opening Friday, will be staged in the same building where two years ago Candy Spelling paid $35 million for the top two floors. Plunk down $40 for a ticket and you can pass through the security gates of the 42-story, 4-acre luxury tower built by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, toss the valet your keys and ride a private elevator to the 20th floor.

Pittsburgh police on Friday were negotiating with a man who said he had a bomb and was holding at least one hostage in a noted downtown office complex, officials said. No shots have been fired and no injuries have been reported during the standoff, which began after 8 a.m. Eastern, police said. In a televised news conference, Police Chief Nate Harper said the man entered the downtown office building, Three Gateway Center, and went by elevator to the 16th floor. There he entered a suite of offices used by CW Breitsman Associates, LLC, a firm that helps administer other companies' insurance and benefits claims.