Gaw's deals as market turned reflect 'luck,' eye for heritage.

SMALL-SCALE DEVELOPER

Goodwin Gaw

Born: San Francisco, 1968

Position: President, Downtown Properties Holdings

Accomplishments: Bought and successfully redeveloped or repositioned four downtown office buildings in the late '90s. Bought the Bradbury Building last year and is redeveloping the Douglas Building and old El Dorado Hotel into condos.

Quote: "I guess I do have an affinity for historically significant buildings because there are a group of tenants who appreciate them. Some have been empty for 20 years, but I try to find opportunities where I can reposition them into use."

To hear Goodwin Gaw tell it, his first downtown investments in the mid- to late-1990s were careful, measured moves, not wild rolls of the dice on an area that had been stumbling for decades.

"We got a little lucky," Gaw, president and founder of Downtown Properties Holdings, said of his purchases of five old, mostly empty office buildings between 1996 and 1999. "I was a little too conservative but it worked out OK."

Gaw, the San Francisco-born scion of a wealthy family that made its fortune in Hong Kong's financial services industry, took his first shot at L.A. real estate with the purchase of the Roosevelt Hotel in 1996.

His attention then turned downtown.

Gaw bought the Barker Bros. building at Seventh and Flower streets, the Peck Norman building at 700 Wilshire Blvd. and the buildings at 612 Flower St. and 611 Wilshire, as well as the historic One Bunker Hill, the one-time headquarters of Southern California Edison.

Gaw repositioned One Bunker Hill toward boutique professional services firms while converting much of the Wilshire Boulevard and Seventh Street buildings to telecom two years before that industry's boom of 1999.

His pace hasn't slowed, but he has adjusted his focus to reflect the demands of the market.

Last year, Downtown Holdings bought the 106-year-old Douglas Building on Spring Street and established a partnership with Bank District developer Tom Gilmore on the old El Dorado Hotel. Both buildings will be redeveloped this year into condominium projects of about 55 units each, Gaw said.

The most notable deal, however, was Gaw's $6 million purchase of the Bradbury Building, the 111-year old landmark that was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and restored by Ira Yellin a decade ago. The building, 20 percent vacant in October, is now full.

"Everyone who worked with Ira felt good about the fact that it was passing into the hands of Goodwin Gaw," said Dan Rosenfeld, principal at Urban Partners, and former partner of Yellin, who died in 2002. "He clearly has an eye for this city's architectural heritage."

While the Douglas and El Dorado will be his first forays into the residential market, those projects and the Bradbury purchase mark a return to form for Gaw, who made a name for himself by buying and repositioning seemingly obsolete buildings downtown.

In all, Gaw estimates he has invested between $120 million and $150 million in downtown real estate purchases, with another $40 million in upgrades.

"He's put his own dough into those buildings," said O'Malley Miller, who specializes in downtown development agreements as a partner at Munger Tolles & Olson LLP.

Gaw still owns all of the buildings except 612 Flower St., later redeveloped by Kor Group and Kennedy Wilson Inc. into the Pegasus luxury apartment complex.

Gaw moved to Hong Kong to work for the family business in 1995 after earning a master's in engineering from Stanford, but returned to the U.S. after just a year to work for Beverly Hills-based Kennedy Wilson. There, he specialized in investing Asian funds in distressed properties.

As for his recent jump into residential, Gaw is typically cautious in his optimism, given downtown's residential building boom.

"You always overshoot, so there will be some correction in the medium term," he said. "But in L.A., there are never enough residential units available."