Lofts

A three-story Abbot Kinney Boulevard work-live space is about as cool as real estate gets in red-hot Venice. This brand-new, three-unit complex of artists' lofts -- an Elaine Carhartt painted-tile mural depicting the area's favorite pastimes spans the facade -- offers a street-level work studio with living quarters above it. The lofts are geared to those who want to incorporate the neighborhood's trendy cafes, art galleries, clubs and clothing boutiques into their domestic lives.

When Little Tokyo Lofts opened in downtown a few years ago, they were billed as the antidote to suburban living. Press materials lured buyers to the former Westinghouse industrial building by promising luxury lofts in an about-to-be-gentrified "vibrant neighborhood" -- which just happened to be at the edge of skid row. And buyers bought the condos, near the corner of 5th and San Pedro streets, hoping that the upscale amenities that had surfaced in other parts of town would follow them there.

When Laurel Canyon native Noah Stone went looking for a place to call his own last year, his thoughts first turned to Silver Lake and Atwater Village. But then Stone, 35, remembered an ad he had seen in Dwell magazine about a new part of downtown near the corner of Industrial and Mateo streets, where a couple of old industrial buildings had been converted into lofts. There, he found the Biscuit Co.

LEANING his long and lanky frame outside his door, Philip Chiang welcomes a visitor to his downtown loft, built with a spot-on view of the 4th Street bridge and Boyle Heights beyond. The third-floor unit has east-facing windows that capture intense morning light, but on any given day, they also frame dozens of car crashes, foot chases and crime scenes -- all staged by the film crews that flock to the street's gritty glamour.

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.

RORY CUNNINGHAM, president of the Art Deco Society of L.A., called it one of the premier Deco buildings in the country. Revered historian Robert Winter said it's a shining example of Southern California's golden age of architecture. Times critic Christopher Hawthorne recently declared it "one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture in the city, a building that would be world-famous if it were located in Manhattan or San Francisco."

For more than 10 years, residents in one of Santa Ana's oldest neighborhoods have lobbied City Hall for new sidewalks, new gutters, cleaner air, less noise and fewer trucks passing through. The response was minimal, said residents of the mixed-use neighborhood near the Santa Ana train station. Until now. The Logan neighborhood, home to orange pickers and railroad workers in the early 1900s, is getting a face lift.

Loft living used to be reserved for some of the most down-to-earth people I know. In the late 1970s and early '80s, artists flocked in increasing numbers to inner-city Los Angeles. Their neighborhood, near Traction Avenue and Hewitt Street, was anchored by Hilbie's (now Bloom's General Store), the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art and Lili Lakich's neon gallery. A surreal, multihued airplane hung precariously above Al's Bar on Hewitt, a beacon for bohemians.

Not so long ago, when people would ask Qathryn Brehm where she lived, she would answer, without excuse or elaboration, "I live downtown." Invariably the question would be followed by another: "You live where?" And that would be the end of it. In the last year or so, she's noticed a shift. "Now they say, 'Oh, you live in a loft?' Then all of a sudden people want to talk about it." Brehm's neighborhood, the Arts District, is hot.