Affluent Asians set up house in downtown L.A.

By Kemp Powers

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Architect Christopher Pak understands what upwardly mobile Koreans want and that's why his latest project, a 22-story residential tower, has no apartments on the fourth and fourteenth floors.

The number 4 sounds like the word "death" in Korean, Pak says. So in his building the fourth level will be for parking and the residential floors will skip the fourteenth.

Pleasing Korean clients is a key part of keeping the downtown and near downtown Los Angeles property market hot, in stark contrast to the chilly sales in most of Southern California in the wake of the subprime lending crisis.

Koreans and other affluent Asians are joining the ranks of young loft dwellers who have fueled a resurgence of downtown Los Angeles as a place to live, not just work.

"Koreans have a natural affinity to downtown," said Pak, a Korean American who is also a partner in the $160 million development, due to be completed in 2008.

Koreans, he said, believe urban cores as having better quality of life than rural or suburban areas, an idea counterintuitive to many in this sprawling city of 3.8 million with few high rises.

The near-downtown neighborhood of Koreatown had already been undergoing a major rehabilitation from its days of devastation in the 1992 race riots.

Today the neighborhood is completely different, bustling with activity day and night and increasingly awash in wealth.