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Inside the Rudolph Valentino suite, Room 1202 of the Alexandria Hotel, flies swarm near red velvet wallpaper and dilapidated furnishings, a dusty chandelier dangles from the ceiling, and the only sign of the silent film star is an old picture screwed to the wall.
But the view from this room is nothing if not optimistic. Nearly every building in every direction is under construction as formerly vacant or derelict properties are converted to high-end condos and loft apartments -- glamorous units that are so hot, buyers are reselling them before they're ever occupied. Photographers, architects, designers and filmmakers are moving in from Los Feliz and Silver Lake, even the Westside. Down at street level, sidewalk cafes and art galleries are cropping up on every block.
"In six months, it's going to be a dramatically different sidewalk scene," says Brady Westwater, who heads downtown Los Angeles' neighborhood council. "In 18 months, you won't recognize it."
Yet right in the heart of this boom, the Alexandria stands at 5th and Spring streets, a monument to the past, the same rundown weekly rate hotel it has been for decades. Elderly tenants still amble through its marble lobby to the local drugstore while others pass their days on shredded red leather benches. And the hotel is still rich with eccentrics: the voodoo woman who curses passersby; Dr. Smellgood, who sprays everyone who gets near him with air freshener; and the Preacher, whose sidewalk "sermons" can be heard for blocks.
The Alexandria's star attractions, the Valentino suite and grand ballrooms, serve almost exclusively as sets for film crews. Beefy security guards, braced for occasional violence, still patrol the entrances while outside, glassy-eyed peddlers work pedestrians, selling heroin and Vicodin, and single cigarettes for a quarter.
"It is what it is," says Martin Yacoobian Jr., whose family has owned the hotel since 1979. The Alexandria, he says, will never be anything more than a home to downtown's downtrodden class, the elderly and the disabled, folks priced out of housing just about everywhere else.
It's too complicated and too costly to convert the rent- controlled building to luxury condos, and any developer considering it "is kidding themselves," says Yacoobian. Evicting the hotel's 350 or so tenants to make room for a...