When the Concerto high-rise condominium project opens this year in downtown Los Angeles, developer Hassan “Sonny” Astani will be lucky not to lose his shirt.

With the market for condos in woeful decline, he already knows he won’t make much money — if any. Progress, at this point, would be to complete the $300-million project while staying out of bankruptcy.

Astani’s struggles to keep the project going, his flirtations with disaster and his near-heroic efforts to save a project that is woefully out of time with the market are a painful illustration of the difficulties that face developers when boom goes bust.

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