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The restart of Park Avenue West in downtown Portland is spurring a renovation across the street, and it could be a sign of things to come.

“Having all that new energy is really going to create a dynamic intersection at (Southwest) Yamhill (Street) and Park Avenue,” said Robert Thompson, the founding principal of TVA Architects, which is designing the 30-story tower going up between Southwest Park and Ninth avenues and Yamhill and Morrison streets.

Thompson also is leading a renovation of the approximately 15,000-square-foot Park and Morrison building on the northeast corner where Park Avenue and Morrison Street intersect. TVA will finish drawings for the project over the next few weeks, but in general the renovation will involve replacement of the existing marble facade around the first floor with a 14-foot-high glass storefront. The brick facade on the second story will be cleaned, and canopies will be added above storefront windows.

The Park and Morrison building, constructed in 1911, has been vacant for years; however, its owners expect that to change with the introduction of the $175 million tower nearby. To some degree, it’s already happening.

“With everything going on, it’s almost a resurgence or renaissance of new retail and restaurants and new energy to the area,” said Ashley Heichelbech, a Commercial Realty Advisors Northwest broker who is marketing the building with colleague Kathleen Healy. “There’s just no inventory, so what there is people are just scrambling to get. We’re working on several different locations for our clients, and have many different tenants interested, and lots of activity.”

Much of that activity is taking place in the West End, which Heichelbech said is beginning to act like a gateway between the Central Business District and the Pearl District. New big-name tenants like Microsoft, Apple and Target are drawing smaller ones like Self Edge and WILL Leather Goods in Union Way at Southwest Stark and Burnside streets and 10th Avenue.

Heichelbech is working with property owner Alix Nathan to lease up an 18,000-square-foot building on the corner of Southwest Stark Street and 12th Avenue that is slated for renovation. She also has worked with developer Richard Singer to bring new retail tenants (like Chrome and Animal Traffic) into his Mecca Building on Southwest Washington Street and 10th Avenue. She added that a renovation of that building’s upper floors is envisioned for a later date.

With lots of interest and little available space, Heichelbech said tenants are now paying upwards of $30 per square foot to rent spaces that were going for $22 per square foot a couple of years ago. She said that prices in the Central Business District are closer to $50 per square foot. According to Colliers International, the average asking rent in the CBD was $28 per square foot triple net in the third quarter of 2013, compared with $17.13 in the central city overall.

Park Avenue West promises to add approximately 28,000 square feet of retail space to the mix.

“At Park Avenue West, they’re asking well above market rates – and they’ll probably get them,” Heichelbech said.

Crews are prepping that site for construction of the below-grade structure. When it’s all said and done, that development will feature two stories of retail space.

Heichelbech said she’s already received several offers to lease space in the two-story Park and Morrison building. It features 5,000-square-foot floor plates, with an equivalent basement. Thompson said the upper floor will be left in a “raw” condition, rather than a finished one, and that it will be an attractive spot with high ceilings and views onto Pioneer Square.

“The building will have tremendous retail visibility,” he said. “Right now it has all these punched windows. We’re creating a glass podium for that masonry to sit on.”

Thompson said one of the building’s owners, Sisters resident Henry Constable, has had a stake since the 1960s. It has since received a couple of renovations. Two years ago a project was envisioned for a specific client, but the deal fell through. Thompson said the current endeavor resumed four months ago, when market opportunity for creative office and retail spaces began picking up. He said a contractor has not been hired yet.

“That whole area, with Park Avenue West, is going to trigger a major redevelopment of all the retail activity that’s happening at the base of all those buildings,” Thompson said.