Many others played roles in transformation.

THE players in downtown's revitalization go far beyond the dozen honored this year.

Indeed, no small handful of people can be given credit for the myriad advances that have come together to generate what is being heralded as downtown's resurgence.

Many conversations, however, do turn to one man, Tom Gilmore.

Nearly a decade after Ira Yellin bought the Bradbury Building, transplanted New Yorker Gilmore began redeveloping three old office buildings along Fourth Street near Main, ushering the first wave of loft-style apartment conversions downtown.

The Hellman and San Fernando buildings opened in 2000, and the Continental a year later, establishing the Old Bank District as a legitimate downtown neighborhood. With those 230 units full, his Gilmore Associates has been working on plans to redevelop the 128-year-old St. Vibiana's Cathedral near Little Tokyo.

Further south, the completion of Staples Center has ushered in a new era for nightlife.

L.A. Arena Land Co., guided by Senior Vice President Ted Tanner, was a key player in developing Staples Center. Tanner, a 26-year veteran of downtown real estate, served in former mayor Tom Bradley's economic development department from 1978 to 1986 and was vice president at Catellus Development Corp., which oversaw the renovation of Union Station in the 1990s.

Tanner helped secure the 10 acres necessary for Philip Anschutz and Ed Roski to build Staples Center.

The city's skyline has been shaped in large part through the efforts of Rob Maguire.

Having developed four buildings atop Bunker Hill in the 1980s with partner Jim Thomas, Maguire, key to the renovation of Los Angeles (now Richard J. Riordan) Central Library in 1993, is downtown's largest Class-A office landlord. Maguire took his company public last June and four months later bought One California Plaza for $225 million.

The impact of CIM Group Inc. has been more recent, starting with its purchase of the old Southern California Gas Co. site at Ninth and Flower streets in 2001. Since then, while developing the mixed-use South Village project on the site, it has purchased Chase Plaza at 801 S. Grand Ave. and 655 S. Hope St. while co-developing Flower Street Lofts with Lee Group.

Though its work has seen better days--and may yet again--A.C. Martin Partners Inc.'s designs remain in downtown's fabric.

More than seven decades after designing its first downtown landmark, City Hall, the architectural firm still has an impact on downtown real estate. In 1971, it designed the 2.7 million-square-foot Arco Plaza and four years later designed the 1.4 million-square-foot Security Pacific World Headquarters Building (now BP Plaza).

Last year, two of the three largest leases were signed in A.C. Martin-designed buildings. The largest was City National Bank's 315,000-square-foot deal at Arco Plaza.

The latest focal point downtown has been the universally lauded Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry. The hall is expected to boost annual visitors to the Music Center by nearly 40 percent this year.

The project nearly stalled out eight years ago, but the success of Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, along with Eli Broad's financial wherewithal, is largely credited with re-igniting the $274 million project at First Street and Grand Avenue. Gehry is also a member of one of the development teams vying for the $1 billion-plus project atop Bunker Hill proposed last year by the Grand Avenue Authority.

Pushing the residential market has been the adaptive reuse ordinance.

While Carol Schatz has been the public voice of support for the measure, Hamid Behdad has quietly worked behind the scenes to make sure the ordinance is carried out properly.

Illustrative of Mayor James Hahn's reliance on the residential expansion for economic development, Behdad, director of adaptive reuse projects for the city's economic development office, has been the point person for developers looking for guidance in this specialty.