Downtown may see its first high-rise break ground in 5 years

A Vancouver developer is finalizing plans to build a 32-story apartment tower at Ninth and Olive streets, the Downtown News reports. No word on how Omni Group will finance the project, but the land is already entitled. If all goes as scheduled, the place would open in 2015. From the paper:

The firm has been eyeing the Downtown Los Angeles market since about 2004, Evans said. The company finally made its move last year when it also bought a 70,000-square-foot mid-rise office building at 1212 S. Flower St. That site includes an adjacent parking lot that Onni plans to develop with a residential building in the future. "From looking at the Downtown market outside-in, we saw the market change significantly in 2008 and it basically stopped," Evans said. "Obviously if that market would have lived another three or four years, Downtown would look significantly different than it does today, but we believe in that transformation and that it's going to continue to happen."

The recession - and in particular the credit squeeze - has been a killer on development activity downtown. Even now financing is tight, though lenders do seem to be loosening up a bit.