This blog has moved to Twitter! Check out my twitter feed for the latest restaurant, retail, and cultural news in the neighborhood.

Angelenic continues our First Look series this week with an inside look at the high-profile Solair Wilshire development on the corner of Wilshire and Western in Koreatown.

The project — being developed by KOAR Institutional Advisors and Archeon Group — is currently framing its 15th floor at the corner of Wilshire and Western. Construction is progressing at a rate of one floor every nine days, and the building should hit its 22-floor peak by year’s end. Move-ins are expected by the end of 2008.

In the meantime, a new sales center (with mock-up “vignettes”) has been set up in the adjacent Wilshire Colonnade office complex and will be available to the public in February.

VIP pre-sales have already garnered the interest of many international buyers, and not just from South Korea. Several European, Japanese, Chinese and Filipino customers are already staking claims on the exclusive condominiums which start in the $800,000s.

Why so expensive? After all, we are talking about gritty Koreatown, right?

To start, the smallest available floorplan will be an ample 1,400 square feet. Add to the mix some of the world’s most renowned designers (Super Potato’s Takeshi Sugimoto is designing the common areas) and fancy five-star finishes.

In case that’s too general for you: Schlage hardware, Grohe bathroom fixtures, Bontempi Cucine cabinets, Bosch appliances and Bang & Olufsen integrated media systems (as an upgrade option), just to give you an idea. Deep-pocketed Asian buyers love their name brands!

And that’s only part of the fun. Once complete, Solair will offer the second largest amenity deck in Los Angeles aside from Related Company’s The Century, under construction in Century City. A community herb garden (no, not that kind of “herb”), cabanas, fire pit, 1000-square-foot pool, spa, fitness center, library lounge, conference room and meditation/yoga lounge will all co-exist on the sky deck.

Back down on the street level, a massive block-long 40,000 square-foot retail center will line Western Avenue and wrap around Wilshire to completely encompass the Metro Purple Line station. No prospective tenants are being disclosed at this time, but please guys, no more frozen yogurt shops.

Retail parking will be located in the development’s subterranean garage, while residents will have two deeded spaces per unit in the podium structure. To preserve the pedestrian experience along Western Avenue, all parking access has been restricted to Oxford Street, on the eastern end of the block. That was thoughtful. The developers have also organized a deal with the MTA to include a bus transit bay on the property’s northeast corner.

Only several years ago a project of this scale and quality would have been unfathomable in the central Los Angeles area. Solair Wilshire’s retail component alone will, upon completion, serve local residents, tourists, and commuters flowing through the transit center. Koreatown has come a long way since the riots of ‘92, and we can’t think of a better development to showcase the neighborhood.

-More model unit and construction photographs here.

-More angelenic First Look coverage.