Undaunted by recent discouraging news in the California housing market, condominium developer South Group is finishing up its third high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles and planning two more, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The Portland, Ore.-based builder is the largest developer of new residential buildings downtown and it is gambling $750 million that demand for housing in condo towers in urban neighborhoods is still strong and that today’s dip in the market will be brief.

By South Group’s reckoning, the current building boom — the largest in decades — transforming many Los Angeles County neighborhoods with billions of dollars’ worth of new residential and commercial development is unstoppable as long as the region’s economic engine keeps growing.

“L.A’s physical form does not match its economy,” said Tom Cody, a South Group principal who described much of the local terrain as “a sea of mediocrity.”

Angelenos are hungry for a more pleasing street scape and developers who help provide it will prosper as the city’s trend of growing-in instead of just out picks up speed, he said, and downtown will continue to get a big share of the action.

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