Downtown development boom

This week's Downtown News has an extraordinary update on the status of more than 170 downtown projects, from Chinatown to USC. It's extraordinary because there are so darn many of them - condos, lofts and hotels, of course, but also restaurants, bars, schools, a homeless center, and all kinds of mixed-use projects. Read the list carefully and you'll notice as fair number of proposed projects on hold, but even discounting those you're still left with lots of activity. The question, of course, is whether there will be demand for all that inventory. Short-term, even the boosters recognize that downtown is being overbuilt, but that's typical for this kind of urban boom. What matters longer-term is the degree of overbuilding, the financial underpinnings of the less successful projects, and the prospects for downtown population growth. In other words, will downtown remain just a funky life- and workstyle alternative or will it become a place where grownups will be willing to raise their families for years and years? At this point, there's no way to know, but the DN list is worth checking out.