No hotel construction under way in downtown - and none in sight.

TABULAR DATA OMITTED

Hotel construction and renovation has ground to a halt in downtown Los Angeles.

By most counts, there are 10 new hotels planned for the area but none is anywhere close to breaking ground.

At least half of the hotels were originally planned for completion this year but for the first time in many years, there is no hotel construction in downtown Los Angeles. In addition, there is not even major renovation of existing hotels going on.

Last December the Hotel Inter-Continental on South Olive Street opened and local hotel industry experts say it could be the last new property in the downtown area for several years, even though the newly expanded and renovated Los Angeles Convention Center is expected to open in September.

"The problems are financing and demand," said Paul DeMeyer, a hotel industry consultant in the Century City office of Kenneth Leventhal & Co. "There's no money available and there is no demand for hotel rooms downtown. Just look at the occupancy rate -- who would build in a market like that?"

Hotel room occupancy rates in downtown Los Angeles have been declining since 1989, when the rate was more than 68 percent. Last year hotel occupancy in downtown properties was 50.5 percent, according to figures compiled by PKF consulting, a national accounting and consulting firm.

In December 1992, occupancy in downtown hotels averaged 32.8 percent, more than 30 percentage points below the industry-accepted break-even point for most hotels of between 65 and 67 percent.

PKF projected that in 1993, downtown hotel occupancy would improve slightly to about 52 percent for the year.

Only one developer of a proposed hotel would say that his project has been abandoned. But none of the developers who responded to inquiries could say that his hotel project would break ground soon.

The one project that has apparently been permanently shelved is a Ritz-Carlton that had been planned at the intersection of Second and Grand streets. Gemtel Corp. was the developer of the proposed project but the company was disbanded several months ago and one of its former principals, through a spokeswoman, said last week the hotel was "dead."

Developers cited a variety of reasons for the halt in downtown hotel construction.

"You can say it's a combination of things -- financing, the market and the economy," said a spokesman for Kintetsu, one of the developers of the Miyako Hotel project.

Local industry analysts and a spokesman for the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau, which tracks hotel development, said they were unaware of any plans to start construction on new downtown properties.

If all of the proposed hotels were built, it would about double the number of available hotel rooms in the immediate downtown area. There are currently about 6,000 hotel rooms in the area.

"Even the convention center hotel can't get built, so I can't see any of the others being built anytime in the next 12 months, and then they will take a couple of years to complete. I think maybe in 1994 you might see one of the ANA hotels or the Macklowe go up, but that's about it," said Saul Leonard, an independent industry consultant in Century City.

After years of booming construction, and growing room inventory, Leonard said it was the first time in at least a decade that there wasn't a hotel being built downtown, or a property undergoing major exterior or even interior renovation.

The most controversial of the proposed hotels is one that has been planned adjacent to the Convention Center, which is currently undergoing a $500 million expansion and is about one mile south of the central business district on Figueroa Street.

The convention bureau and a task force of business leaders and local government officials have said a major hotel is needed next to the expanded and renovated facility. A convention center hotel should be built if the city wants to attract major groups into the facility, they said.

If a major hotel is not built next to the facility by 1997, the city will start losing bookings, the convention bureau has said. However, the hotel is no closer to being built now than it was in the late 1980s when it was first proposed.

The first developer of a convention center hotel project went bankrupt and subsequent builders asked for financial aid from the city that officials rejected.

Local analysts said there are no indications that the convention center hotel will be built any time soon.