High Rise Buildings

The City Council has approved a 45-day ban on the construction of buildings over two stories or 30 feet in height without a conditional use permit. A permanent ordinance is being prepared by city staff and will proceed through the public hearing process before the Planning Commission. The city is in the process of reviewing its zoning code to determine appropriate locations for high-rise buildings.

Donald M. Koll, a real estate developer who pioneered high-rise office building in Orange County and among other projects helped turn Los Cabos, Mexico, into a premier resort destination, has died. He was 78. Koll died Tuesday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center of complications of a heart attack suffered Dec 2. He had been in ill health since having a stroke six years ago. Real estate and construction have been in the Koll family for generations. In 1889, Koll's grandfather August founded A.J. Koll, a lumber business in Los Angeles.

When it comes to high-rise buildings in Orange County, the extreme isn't all that extreme. Costa Mesa's Center Tower, at 287 feet and 21 stories, is the tallest. The second-tallest building in the county is just 2 feet shorter: the 21-story Plaza Tower, also in Costa Mesa, near South Coast Plaza. Signs indicate that these kings of the Orange County skyline probably won't be dethroned by other structures any time soon.

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.

Because there are too few qualified installers and the installation process is often very complex, the retrofitting of 1,250 older high-rise buildings in California with automatic sprinkler systems could take as long as four years, a state Senate panel was told Friday.

Shifts in employment, greater value placed on discretionary time, escalating land costs and changing attitudes toward living downtown will contribute to an increase in residential high-rise living, concluded speakers at the international conference on "The Second Century of the Skyscraper" here. Travel times are becoming more important as people become better educated, Houston developer Gerald D. Hines said.

Before a packed chamber of angry and emotional residents of high-rise buildings, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday unanimously rejected an ordinance that would have required retrofitting more than 60 of the city's older residential high-rises with automatic fire sprinklers. The 14-0 vote ended a tortuous five-year struggle during which support for the sprinklers gradually waned as the costs of retrofitting became known.

Los Angeles officials fear that the high price of retrofitting City Hall and five other publicly owned high-rise buildings with sprinkler systems might prompt cost-conscious private high-rise owners to abandon their grudging support for a mandatory sprinkler law. According to "rough" estimates, contained in a report released Wednesday, the grand total could climb to more than $36 million over the next few years. That is more than double the previous estimate.

The day started with an easy boat trip from Osaka to the partly reopened port of Kobe, a city once again teeming with activity. It ended after a 12-mile trek, with a grimly unsuccessful rescue attempt that left the executive director of California's Seismic Safety Commission, L. Thomas Tobin, saying he wished that some of Sacramento's politicians could see this place.

Under pressure from Los Angeles County officials and lobbyists for developers, a sharply divided California Coastal Commission on Wednesday approved a sweeping plan to intensively redevelop Marina del Rey into a high-rise community on the water.

It's not every day that Los Angeles welcomes a new addition to its skyline. And this week, the city did it in style with a gala for the 54-story Ritz-Carlton hotel-condo tower that is the centerpiece of L.A. Live and opens for business next month. The guest of honor was Tim Leiweke, president and chief executive of AEG, which built the $2.5-billion L.A. Live and has been at the center of the effort to develop the area around Staples Center into a sports and entertainment hub. The blue-hued tower is a big part of the plan.

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.

If you're in the Valley in the coming days and see military helicopters swooping around high-rise buildings, don't worry. Black Hawk helicopters will be part of a flight training mission taking place after 5 p.m. today and Monday in central and west Valley areas, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. "We wanted to let people know so nobody gets spooked and freaked out about it," said Officer Steve Scallon. -- Mike Anton

A Santa Monica architect known for his high-rise designs is working on what may be the ultimate "spec" building -- a 224-story skyscraper with green ambitions that would be the tallest structure in the world. The tower is envisioned for a man-made island in Abu Dhabi, if leaders of the oil-rich emirate decide they want to make a statement to rest of the world and perhaps one-up neighboring Dubai. A conceptual design for the $3.5-billion project in the United Arab Emirates is under consideration by an Abu Dhabi planning committee, said Tommy Landau, the architect who created the design and is part of an unusual team of U.S. real estate players trying to get the ambitious project launched.

Downtown Los Angeles' largest landlord, Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc., has added an unfinished residential tower and a project in Chinatown to its bankruptcy filings. The 35-story luxury apartment tower, located near Staples Center at 705 W. 9th St., was supposed to be finished by the end of the year. That's still the plan, said Michael Bustamante, a spokesman for Meruelo Maddux Properties. "The filing occurred on a Thursday and workers were there on Friday and Saturday and they were there this week too," Bustamante said.

The Figueroa Street corridor in downtown Los Angeles is already thick with hotels, restaurants and office towers. So is it ready for the vast project announced this week on the site of the Wilshire Grand hotel? The $1-billion proposal by owner Korean Air calls for demolishing the 1950s hotel and an adjoining office building and replacing it with two skyscrapers: a 60-story office tower and a 40-story hotel. It's just the latest in a series of projects that have been remaking the corridor.

The city government has begun restricting construction of high-rises and is insisting that new buildings be coordinated with surrounding architecture, the official Xinhua news agency said. The news agency said tall office and apartment buildings built throughout Peking in the past decade have encroached upon centuries-old homes, gardens and temples and destroyed much of the city's historic beauty. Traditional Chinese homes are generally only one or two stories high and built around a courtyard.

About 40% of the high-rise buildings in Jakarta are potential towering infernos because of insufficient protection against fire, according to a government report published Wednesday. The survey of 200 buildings in Jakarta came in the wake of a series of mysterious fires that have gutted three high-rise department stores and the headquarters of Radio Indonesia.

Modern steel buildings have long been considered among the most sturdy in the event of a major earthquake. But a model of a massive quake in Southern California has sparked debate among scientists and engineers over whether these structures are more vulnerable than previously thought. The Great Southern California ShakeOut, the nation's largest quake drill, suggested that about five high-rise steel buildings in the region would collapse in the modeled magnitude 7.8 quake.

The owner of the Beverly Connection mall has agreed to withdraw plans for two high-rise residential towers as part of a settlement with two community groups that challenged the expansion in court, citing concerns about density in one of the city's most congested areas.