Getting High

Get ready for another downtown skyscraper boom, the L.A. Times reports.

The paper notes that 32 new towers are on the drawing boards, with 20 of them considered skyscrapers (climbing more than 240 feet, or about 20 stories).

Writes the paper: The return to tall towers will be a marked change for downtown Los Angeles, whose last new skyscraper was the 750-foot, 52-story Two California Plaza, completed in 1992.

At the south end of downtown, two residential towers already under construction near Staples Center will be joined by a 55-story hotel and condominium complex scheduled to break ground later this year.

To the north, near Walt Disney Concert Hall, at least five skyscrapers are slated for construction as part of the Grand Avenue project, including a 40- to 50-story building to be designed by architect Frank Gehry and scheduled for completion in 2009.

The changing skyline should begin to take shape in the next three years, when the first five buildings that have already won city approval are completed. They include a 33-story loft building at 9th and Flower streets.

But there are lingering concerns that the downtown residential market could suffer the same fate as office space did in the early 1990s, when far more new buildings went up than were needed. Rents plummeted, buildings sat vacant — and it took a decade for downtown to recover.

The paper notes that even after the building boom is finished, around 2010, the 73-story US Bank Tower -- the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the Library Tower, which was the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the First Interstate World Center, which was the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the Library Tower -- will still be L.A.'s biggest.

What will change: The gap between the Transamerica building and the rest of downtown will be filled in.

That area, called South Park and near Staples Center, is the hub of most of the initial construction, where cranes and crews are already turning former parking lots into high-rises.

This district has far more open space than other parts of downtown, so residents and city planners expect it to be more dramatically transformed. It is also where many amenities for downtown residents will open in coming years, including a Ralphs supermarket — set to open late next year — and movie theaters.

To the north, downtown will see the completion of Bunker Hill's decades-long transformation from a slightly seedy residential quarter into a zone full of high-rises.

Why do I get the feeling we'll be lamenting the glut of downtown skyscrapers with low occupancy rates a few years from now?