Projects breathe life into Wilshire corridor

Wilshire Boulevard as it stretches west from downtown was for decades a center of commerce, with a row of high-rise buildings once occupied by business powerhouses like Union Bank, Texaco, IBM and Getty Oil.

Those corporate logos disappeared from the tops of the towers long ago. But in the last few years, Wilshire has been reborn as a stylish residential address -- catering at least in part to wealthy Koreans who have flocked to the area.

There are more than two dozen residential developments -- adding up to thousands of new housing units -- either completed or proposed along the boulevard between downtown and the Miracle Mile district.

Some of the projects are rehabs of shuttered office towers, such as the 1100 and 1010 Wilshire towers and the Mercury, the old Getty Oil headquarters across the street from Solair. Others are brand-new projects, sleek glass-and-steel towers like the Solair, where officials gathered Monday to mark the building's "topping off"--the point in construction when the roof's concrete is poured and the structure itself fully enclosed.

"We expect this to be a hub, a focal point for the Wilshire corridor," said L.A. County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, of the project, which sits atop a Purple Line station.

But the building boom is meeting with growing concerns from some residents. There is particular alarm over new projects planned near the corner of La Brea Avenue and Wilshire, already a major traffic bottleneck, where hundreds of new housing units have been proposed.

"All we are seeing is growth and not the infrastructure," said Jim O'Sullivan, president of the Miracle Mile Residents Assn.

"All of these projects have what they call ground-floor commercial. What you get is Jamba Juice or Subway or Starbucks. That flies in the face of what the city calls smart growth," O'Sullivan said. "Smart growth is supposed to combine living and office spaces [to cut down on commutes]. No one who is moving into these new apartments is going to go down and work in Jamba Juice or Starbucks."

He and others said the city should encourage more office development on the sites, because those would bring in jobs where new area residents might work.

But other city leaders strongly support the revitalization. They note that some buildings that are being rehabbed had long been either empty or in decay -- like the Art Deco building that once housed Desmond's department store west of LaBrea, and the mid-century Colwell Co. building north of Vermont.

The stretch of Wilshire was once one of L.A.'s most fashionable districts, home to the Ambassador Hotel, Bullocks Wilshire department store and close to the mansions of Hancock Park.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Mid-Wilshire area took on the feel of a city center, with a canyon of high-rise office buildings between downtown and Hancock Park (where residents insisted on height limits).

But by the late 1980s, the area was showing signs of decline.

The riots of 1992 -- and a recession in the early '90s -- hit the area hard, as companies vacated some of the buildings.

The current revival is being sparked in part by investment from Koreans and Korean Americans, which is fueling a shift in the area toward more upscale housing.

This demographic shift is apparent to George W. Mantor, community sales manager for the Mercury, a 1963 office tower designed by Claude Beelman. Condos in the building are now selling for $400,000 to more than $1 million.

"In my profession, we're not supposed to notice," Mantor said, "but interest in this area is primarily driven by Koreans."

One reason: South Korea has allowed its residents to invest more and more capital abroad, and Mantor has seen many of those dollars invested in residential housing in Koreatown.