Downtown Los Angeles Sees Luxury Revival

Downtown Los Angeles peaked as a commerce center in the 1920s with banking and business headquarters stretching across the skyline, grand hotels such as the Biltmore and Alexandria and nascent luxury brands such as Harry Winston. Much of the city's influence and focus moved west down Wilshire Boulevard over the decades, though, leaving the city's inner core to languish in a mostly 9-to-5 world of white-collar workers, infamous Skid Row and an infrastructure of decaying landmarks that, despite a skyscraper skyline and gilded landmarks, became a virtual no-man's-land after dark.

But a reinvention of downtown Los Angeles began with the arrival of the city's Staples Center in 1999, owned in part and operated by the Anschutz Entertainment Group, and developments that included an ambitious design hotel by Andre Balazs in 2002 and burgeoning art scene flocking to loft developments at various historic bank and industrial buildings. Then came L.A. Live, a mixed-use entertainment venue with a reported price tag of $2.5 billion that gave a home to the Nokia Theater, Grammy Museum and a glassy condo-hotel tower. There are even plans for a football stadium that could lure an NFL franchise back to Los Angeles. Today, L.A. Live stands at the center of a new downtown, flanking the southwest strip of the skyline next to the Los Angeles Convention Center and Staples Center. The only five-star luxury hotel in downtown L.A., the Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles opened last year in the 22nd to 26th floors of a multi-use high-rise above a J.W. Marriott sister-hotel and below Ritz-Carlton Residences. It feels more like New York City than L.A. with its efficient doorman and counter-style reception. With no showy lobby lounge or glitzy restaurant on the ground floor, the reception is all about getting you to your room as efficiently as possible, and there's no less than four staff members guiding you before you even get to the elevator. The Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles' interiors are credited to Barry Design Associates, a Santa Monica firm that's worked on properties including Milan's Hotel Principe di Savoia and Four Seasons Hotel Atlanta. Elevators are lined in mixed shades and shapes of cut marble opening to long corridors with plush carpeting -- and additional elevators that connect only the five upper guest-room floors, meaning you're never forced to mix with those going to and from the lobby. While the front desk insists that all views are essentially equal, the west-facing view is the one to ask for -- it faces the Santa Monica Mountains and panoramic ocean silhouette on clearer days.

Deluxe rooms open to small foyers through integrated glossy-white wardrobes -- likely the prettiest closet you've ever seen. King-size beds are tucked with fluffy Italian linens facing built-in workspaces under a vista of the downtown skyline that instantly vanishes with manual blackout shades. Bathrooms are trimmed in marble vanities with shiny tile walls, and the wet room has a rain shower and soaking tub. (The TVs integrated in the vanity mirror are too far too see easily, though.) A rooftop pool maximizes skyline views and there could be a great cabana scene, but during our visit it was lacking music and people, save for a lone businessman overdressed on a hot autumn afternoon.

The in-house WP24, an Asian-concept eatery by star-chef Wolfgang Puck, is one of the hottest reservations in town. On our visit it was closed for a posh private event. Luckily there's no shortage of top eateries that have opened in the past few years in downtown Los Angeles. L.A. Live includes chains such as ESPN Zone, Yard House, Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar, Rock'N Fish and Rosa Mexicano. For a more local taste of downtown, a walk to nearby Rivera Restaurant offers much reward where Esquire's Chef of the Year, John Rivera Sedlar, leads a Latin menu of food and drink in a sexy space of exotic wood floors, chunky tables and a lively bar that's open for lunch and dinner. Menus are divided between three dining room themes of Sangre (Spanish and Portuguese), Samba (South American) and Playa Bar (Mexican and Southwestern) offering global Latin cuisine in a single restaurant. Further into the downtown's historic core, a number of super-stylish eateries attract a mix of loft-living locals, office workers and commuters to a trendy dining scene led by a few standouts. Bottega Louie would be one of the more famous and popular, offering a sparse loft-meets-Louis XIV dining room divided between a cafe bar with patisserie and no-reservations restaurant. Food is cooked in an open kitchen by a staff of edgy, well-tattooed epicureans that turn out consistent salads, burgers, frites and traditional chicken dishes. Not far away, Urbano Pizza Bar mixes rustic industrialism in a dining room of reclaimed wood paneling and pounded-tin ceiling with wood-fired pizzas topped with manila clams and mozzarella or hen eggs with mushroom ricotta.Directly next-door to Urbano Pizza Bar is Library Bar, a retro-inspired speakeasy filled with downtown's more eccentric design students and white-collar happy hour revelers within a boutique bar scene inspired by the private studies and libraries of yesteryear. A short appetizer menu complements whiskey cocktails such as the Tennessee Williams and Wilde's Sazerac. During warmer weather, the nearby Standard Hotel Downtown Los Angeles has one of the city's hottest rooftop pool bars -- ignited with an outdoor fireplace where snugly seated professionals sip away chilly sunsets among a revived downtown L.A. skyline.RELATED STORIES: >>Dorchester Collection Races to Luxury Leader>>Home Exchanges Mean Free Stays in Luxury>>Cipriani by Another Name Proves Just as ChicFollow TheStreet on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. >To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints