Downtown towers promise to reshape skyline, neighborhood.

A LONG Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, the skeletons of two 18-story high-rise condominiums, still under construction, have reshaped the skyline overlooking the ocean.

A block away, a cluster of Mediterranean-style apartments have huge "For Lease" signs hanging from their rooftops.

In all, the downtown area near Long Beach City Hall and the convention center is home to five major apartment and condominium projects under construction, totaling nearly $1 billion in value and 1 million square feet in size.

The 4,000 new housing units that are either recently opened or in the planning or construction stages will increase, downtown's existing housing stock by 20 percent.

"The whole area is going through a huge renaissance," said Bill Lindborg, a principal of Borg Development, a local real estate firm. "It's because Long Beach is one of the last affordable enclaves in California that's on the coast."

Lindborg was one of the first developers to move into downtown Long Beach, teaming with two partners to convert the historic Walker Building, a vacant old department store, into 39 lofts and seven high-end penthouses.

The units, originally sold in 2001, have doubled in value. A few sold recently for between $400,000 and $600,000.

City officials have spent the past 15 years trying to lure developers into the city's urban center, lifting zoning requirements to allow high-rise condominiums and apartments to coexist alongside restaurants, retail and office space. "There are macro-economic factors at work," said Robert Zur Schmiede, the city's development officer. "The change down here in the last 10 years is nothing short of miraculous."

Long Beach first began to take shape in the 1860s, after Lewellyn Bixby purchased Rancho Los Cerritos, once part of a Spanish land grant. A developer, William Willmore, began building homes nearby, close to what is now the downtown area. When he went bust after a few years, Bixby's cousin, John Bixby, took it over and continued building.

In the early 1900s, the establishment of the Port of Long Beach and the discovery of oil nearby produced downtown's first building boom. A major earthquake in 1933 destroyed much of downtown, but it was rebuilt during the Great Depression in Art Deco style, with the help of oil revenues.

By the early 1990s, the loss of local aerospace jobs and locally based military personnel helped destabilize the local economy. Tourists tended to avoid downtown and head instead to local attractions such as the Queen Mary and the Convention Center.

"We really didn't see that much investment during the 1990s because of the recession," said Barbara Kaiser, the city's redevelopment bureau manager. "Now it's turned around because developers are able to get financing to build hotels and Southern California real estate has just taken off."

One of the largest developments is Ocean Villas, two high-rises under construction by Genesis Realty of Houston for $100 million. The 556 condominiums will be priced starting at $300,000.

Camden Development's Park at Harbor View, on the south side of Ocean Boulevard between Pacific and Magnolia avenues, consists of six Mediterranean-style buildings with 538 apartments clustered above the waterfront. The development, which cost $137 million, is more than 50 percent leased.

Camden, which originally purchased 12 acres downtown, has signed an agreement to sell 2.4 acres to Intracorp, a Canadian homebuilder that plans to build another 246 condominiums on the site. Another Camden tract received city approval for a 500-room hotel and 200 additional condos, said Rick Holcomb, director of development and acquisitions at Camden, a unit of publicly traded Camden Property Trust of Houston.

Two new retail developments are also attracting weekend consumers to the area. Just a block behind Ocean Boulevard on the downtown waterfront is the Pike at Rainbow Harbor, an 18-acre, $130 million complex anchored by a A4-screen Cinemark Theater. The complex is not fully opened but is already attracting plenty of foot traffic.