Thirty-eight stories tall, the Orowood Tower had originally been planned to be the nucleus of an elaborate and extensive colony of Alderaanians who had been off-planet when the first Death Star destroyed their world. But though the architects had painstakingly crafted every facet of the Tower to fit the Alderaanian style, Coruscant's crowds and near-total land development were simply too alien to their life view for most of the refugees to feel comfortable living there.
Though the rest of the project had been abandoned, there had been hopes that enough Alderaanians would remain on Coruscant to keep the Tower itself occupied, particularly given its spectacular view of the Manarai Mountains. But that final dream had been dealt its death blow by Grand Admiral Thrawn's short-lived but terrifying siege of the planet. When the siege was finally lifted, virtually all the Alderaanians left Coruscant, going to New Alderaan or scattering out among the stars. As one of them had explained to Leia, they had been lucky enough to escape the destruction of one world, and had no desire to settle on an even more tempting target.
And so the grand experiment had settled into vague obscurity, joining the host of other residential centers clustered beneath the mountains, most of which provided secondary or vacation homes to rich industrialists and government officials. Offworlders and aliens, most of whom had never even heard of the fabled oro woods of Alderaan, let alone ever walked among them.
--Star Wars: Specter of the Past (Buy it)
By Timothy Zahn