Office Buildings Security

An early morning robbery attempt inside a Hollywood office building Thursday turned violent when an assailant repeatedly stabbed two women, sending them to the hospital with serious injuries, police said. The victims, whose names and ages were not released, were recovering at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. They were attacked about 8 a.m. in their office at Physicians' Administrators Inc., a medical billing service on the 19th floor of the First Interstate Bank building on Sunset Boulevard.

High-rise office towers in Los Angeles are a lot more secure - sometimes exasperatingly so - than they were a decade ago. Fears turbo-boosted by the terrorist attacks pulled up the welcome mat of yore, when the only obstacle to visiting the 50 t h floor was finding the right bank of elevators. Since 9/11, local landlords have spent tens of millions of dollars buttoning up their buildings in an effort to ensure that no unwelcome strangers make it inside. Such strict security is here to stay at the region's trophy office buildings, industry observers said, but the darkest predictions about the future of America's downtowns made in the aftermath of 9/11 did not come to pass.

Two suspicious packages spotted Thursday in the lobby of a building in the World Trade Center were not bombs and the area was later reopened, authorities said. Police bomb squads were sent to the scene near the parking garage where a powerful bomb went off last Feb. 26, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others. The bomb squads determined that the bags in the lobby of No.

An early morning robbery attempt inside a Hollywood office building Thursday turned violent when an assailant repeatedly stabbed two women, sending them to the hospital with serious injuries, police said. The victims, whose names and ages were not released, were recovering at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. They were attacked about 8 a.m. in their office at Physicians' Administrators Inc., a medical billing service on the 19th floor of the First Interstate Bank building on Sunset Boulevard.

The view from Floor 41 was a spectacular midnight landscape of freeways and shimmering lights. But Scott Samet was not enjoying the scenery. The young financial analyst was cloistered in a small, windowless room, poring over charts and fiscal projections. He had been at it for nearly 15 hours. With eyes fixed on a computer screen, he was staring hard at a morning deadline.

High-rise office towers in Los Angeles are a lot more secure - sometimes exasperatingly so - than they were a decade ago. Fears turbo-boosted by the terrorist attacks pulled up the welcome mat of yore, when the only obstacle to visiting the 50 t h floor was finding the right bank of elevators. Since 9/11, local landlords have spent tens of millions of dollars buttoning up their buildings in an effort to ensure that no unwelcome strangers make it inside. Such strict security is here to stay at the region's trophy office buildings, industry observers said, but the darkest predictions about the future of America's downtowns made in the aftermath of 9/11 did not come to pass.

The Blue Whale is a strange building. What goes on in that sign-free, massive building on the corner of Melrose and San Vicente? Why does it look like the mantelpiece from Godzilla's home? Why is it such a deep, unnatural blue? Why is this gridded behemoth named after a marine mammal? The Pacific Design Center, as it is officially called, is a vaguely tube-shaped, eight-story warehouse with few visible openings that gives no sign of what goes on inside.

Juan Goldstein was seeking a building variance in Los Angeles City Hall when he was hit. Sharmila Dasgupta was taking a coffee break. Edmund Gonzalez was standing at a City Hall urinal. All of them became crime victims in the city's Downtown headquarters, an edifice so massive and unsecure that it is in the midst of a crime wave. An estimated $250,000 worth of property was pilfered from the building last year by an amalgam of light-fingered employees, visitors and transients.

The anthrax and terrorism scares have accomplished something on Capitol Hill that good-government reformers could not: They have slapped new limits on the access that legions of lobbyists have to members of Congress. The anthrax-riddled congressional mail service has halted. Many lawmakers have been shut out of their contaminated office buildings. Tightened security has banished outsiders from key parts of the Capitol.

Two suspicious packages spotted Thursday in the lobby of a building in the World Trade Center were not bombs and the area was later reopened, authorities said. Police bomb squads were sent to the scene near the parking garage where a powerful bomb went off last Feb. 26, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others. The bomb squads determined that the bags in the lobby of No.

The view from Floor 41 was a spectacular midnight landscape of freeways and shimmering lights. But Scott Samet was not enjoying the scenery. The young financial analyst was cloistered in a small, windowless room, poring over charts and fiscal projections. He had been at it for nearly 15 hours. With eyes fixed on a computer screen, he was staring hard at a morning deadline.