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After nearly a year of silence, some headway is finally being made on the proposal to bring Asian specialty grocer Uwajimaya into Old Town/Chinatown.

Representatives of Uwajimaya, headquartered in Seattle, signed a letter of intent last week with Portland-based Sockeye Development to open a store in Old Town. The store, which would occupy an entire block bordered by Northwest Fourth and Fifth avenues and Couch and Davis streets, would be the second Uwajimaya in Oregon; the other is in Beaverton.

Doug Obletz, lead developer at Sockeye Development, said the letter of intent gives the Portland Development Commission six months to secure at least $10 million for the project, which has been estimated to cost slightly less than $80 million. The PDC has approximately $8 million in Downtown Waterfront Urban Renewal Area money set aside already, Obletz said.

Uwajimaya did not return calls, but Peter Englander, the PDC’s manager for the Downtown Waterfront URA, acknowledged the project isn’t finalized yet.

“The letter of intent between Uwajimaya and Sockeye Development is a significant step in clarifying the intentions of the major regional Asian grocer to open a Portland store in Old Town/Chinatown,” Englander said. “All parties, however, still have far to go to make this project a reality.”

The project stalled in 2008, when the PDC looked for additional public money, and the recession lengthened the process, said David Gold, co-owner of Block 33, the property proposed for the development. Construction originally was supposed to begin in late 2009; now it is slated to start between 2012 and 2014.

“Everyone involved has been waiting to see what was going to happen with the recession before we went any further with the development,” Gold said. “We needed to be able to prove to everyone involved we had a viable project, and this letter of intent helps do that.”

In addition to the street-level grocery store, which will occupy between 24,000 and 28,000 square feet, plans call for an additional street-level retail space, a courtyard and retail space on a mezzanine level, second-floor office space, three stories of underground parking, and 140 mixed-income apartment units.

But Gold said the number of apartments could change because of the current outlook. The Portland market is highly saturated because of the housing market’s condition, he said.

“Now that the letter of intent has been signed, we need to look at the project again and figure out what is going to be viable a few years down the road,” Gold said.

The project has been in the works since 2003, when the PDC performed a conceptual development study for the Goldsmith Blocks in Old Town. Uwajimaya was rumored to be a potential tenant for the proposed development since the study was completed.

“What this letter of intent really does is help reaffirm everyone’s commitment to the project and help subside the feelings of anyone who has doubted Uwajimaya’s commitment,” Englander said.

Old Town is growing while other areas of Portland aren’t. The PDC earlier this year decided to keep its headquarters in Old Town, and a new campus for the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine is planned to be built in the district.

“The neighbors will tell you that this is the leap in transformation that this neighborhood is primed to have,” Englander said. “The office market is tight here, so the next generation to keep this neighborhood moving forward will be a development like this.”

But Gold, Englander and Obletz agree there is still a long way to go before the development is concrete.

“The letter of intent is just what it says: intent to keep discussing the possibility of this project,” Gold said. “This solidifies one portion of the project, (which is) that everyone wants to see it happen. But there are still a lot of things left to figure out.”