Barg Singer Hoesly is expanding into a new office in downtown Portland.

The real estate law firm has inked a lease for approximately 3,300 square feet in the 1000 Broadway Building, said Jonathan Singer, a partner at the firm.

“It’s a great location,” he said. “It’s not the newest downtown office, but they’ve done a good job of refreshing it.”

The 24-story office building, which was completed in 1992, is owned by members of the Moyer family and managed by NAI Elliott. It was the first tower developed by Tom Moyer, who later built Fox Tower and Park Avenue West before he died in 2014.

Barg Singer Hoesly outgrew its current space at 121 S.W. Morrison St., Singer said. The firm has long subleased from another law firm — Farleigh Wada Witt.

“It’s been a great relationship over that period of time,” Singer said. “We’re just too big for the space at this point.”

The five-lawyer firm has historically focused on real-estate transaction work, but now also boasts a commercial litigation team.

Tenants largely have their pick of office space in today’s market, with vacancy rates remaining near record highs. During the first quarter of 2026, the Portland market’s direct vacancy rate was 15.2 percent, according to Kidder Mathews.

Barg Singer Hoesly chose a move-in ready space instead of pursuing costly tenant improvements.

“It is a good time to be a tenant, but it’s got to be the right space because the cost of building out is so expensive,” Singer said. “Construction costs are so high that it made this space a really perfect fit, because it was already built out for a law firm of approximately our size.”

NAI Elliott is in the midst of a multiyear renovation of the 1000 Broadway Building. Elevators are being replaced and the lobby is being refreshed.

Law firms and other professional service providers have continued to buttress downtown office tenancy as tech firms and others downsize their office footprints. Law firms have led the way in signing leases for some of Portland’s newest, and likely priciest, office space in buildings such as the Block 216 Ritz-Carlton tower and Eleven West.

“Law firms writ large have found that they are much busier in this economy,” Singer said. “Also, if you’re going to draw the top talent, you really need to have office space that inspires people to come in.”

Law firms value collaboration and mentorship, which are better done in person, Singer said.

Barg Singer Hoesly will move into the 1000 Broadway Building on June 18. The lease term is slightly shorter than six years, Singer said. He declined to reveal the lease rate, citing an agreement with the landlord.

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A law firm has signed a lease for a 15,610-square-foot office space in a downtown Portland tower.

Lindsay Hart LLP agreed to terms for space on the 27th floor of the Standard Insurance Center, at 900 S.W. Fifth Ave. The firm will relocate from another downtown tower, the Wells Fargo Center, in November, according to a news release from CBRE, which represented the landlord, Standard Insurance Co.

“This transaction highlights an encouraging trend of leasing activity in downtown Portland,” stated Kevin Kaufman, first vice president at CBRE. “This agreement reflects the growing momentum in Portland’s central business district and the appeal of high-quality office spaces in the area.”

Kaufman and Joe Beehler secured the Lindsay Hart deal for CBRE. Lindsay Hart was represented by JLL‘s Eric Haskins.

Built in 1968, the full-block Standard Insurance Center is among the largest buildings in Portland, with approximately 460,000 square feet in 27 stories.

Law firms and other professional service providers have been stalwart users of downtown office space, which remains mired in a steep downturn.

Davis Wright Tremaine and Fisher Phillips anchor the office space at Block 216, the new tower owned by BPM Real Estate. Miller Nash was among the first tenants at Eleven West, another relatively new building from Downtown Development Group.

Architecture firms have embraced downtown. SERA Architects moved into 42,000 square feet in the Galleria building in 2022. And Populous, a major international firm, will move its Portland group into an as-yet unidentified downtown building in the fall.

In a shift, downtown offices are now attracting more tenants than are the suburbs, according to CBRE. In the first quarter of 2025, downtown Portland office buildings secured more leasing volume for spaces 5,000 square feet and larger than suburban office buildings did.

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In downtown Portland, signs of life are slowly returning. More restaurants and coffee shops are serving patrons, large retailers such as Powell’s Books are welcoming customers, and some professionals are returning to offices.

The pandemic devastated commercial real estate – and specifically the urban office market – while other sectors such as industrial and multifamily housing were affected less. Protests throughout 2020 that at times turned violent combined with a proliferation of homeless camps and litter to create negative impressions of downtown.

For a while this past summer, it seemed as if COVID-19 was waning and office work would soon return. Then the Delta variant scrambled plans. Ever since, the lingering question has been: When will downtown return to normal, or something like it?

According to boosters and analysts, downtown’s fate will follow the office worker.

“A return to office is critical,” said Matthew Goodman, vice president of Downtown Development Group, a major Portland real estate developer and owner. “Daily workers are the lifeblood of downtown’s ecosystem. The ancillary restaurants and services, they depend on those office users.”

Businesses that offer professional services, such as law firms, are leading the return to downtown offices.

Stoel Rives, Portland’s largest law firm, asked its 282-strong workforce to return to the Park Avenue West office twice a week beginning Nov. 1 and then three times a week beginning this month, said David Filippi, co-managing partner at Stoel Rives.

“So far, the response has been pretty positive,” he said.

Downtown is still the best place to meet clients and do business, Filippi said.

“We believe that downtown is where we want to be,” he said. “It’s where we have been for decades, and we fully plan to be downtown as long as we’re a firm practicing together.”

The atmosphere downtown seems to be improving, Filippi said.

“It’s gotten better recently,” he said. “Things have been cleaned up, and we’re starting to see things open up a little bit more.”

Another law firm, Buchalter, announced a rare new downtown lease on Nov. 3. The 50-person firm will move into Fox Tower by April 1, 2022, taking 17,000 square feet on the building’s 15th floor.

That will hardly make a dent in a downtown Portland’s bulging office supply. Office vacancies hit 19.9 percent in the Central Business District during the third quarter, according to JLL. Net absorption was underwater to the depth of 238,573 square feet, and 509,825 additional square feet of office space was in development.

Vacancies have probably not hit their high-water mark yet, said Tim Harrison, a research manager at JLL in Portland.

“The recovery will start in 2022, but it’s going to take a long time to get back to pre-pandemic vacancy levels,” he said.

A flood of new office buildings hit the market in 2020 at the worst possible time, and it will take years to absorb, Harrison said.

JLL itself has doubled down on its Pearl District space, at 1120 N.W. Couch St., by signing a long-term lease to expand.

Some companies with lease renewals two or three years away have taken advantage of the downturn by signing renewals at attractive rates and terms. Landlords have been eager to make deals to keep buildings occupied, Harrison said.

“Professional services and finance is generally where you’ve seen the majority of tenants coming back, with tech sort of being the last holdout,” he said.

Retail vacancies have enabled a new cohort of entrepreneurs to buy into downtown Portland, Goodman said. Grits N’ Gravy, for instance, opened its first brick-and-mortar location there. Downtown Development Group has welcomed other locally owned retailers – Foxy Coffee Co., Everybody Eats PDX, The Sudra and Dogtopia – to downtown.

“For a long time, downtown wasn’t the sort of place where people could afford to make inroads,” Goodman said. “I think there’s a new sort of entrepreneurial spirit in the core.”

At the same time, Portland officials have placed a renewed emphasis on cleaning up downtown, in part because of pressure from People for Portland, a newly formed advocacy group that has blanketed the city with ads.

“You’ve seen a noticeable sense of urgency placed on elected officials,” Goodman said. “It makes me very hopeful in the near term for positive change.”

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By ALEX VEIGA
AP Business Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is fueling optimism that Americans will increasingly return to the ways they used to shop, travel and work before the pandemic.

That would be a welcome change for companies that own office buildings and hotels, or those that lease space to restaurants, bars, department stores and other retailers. These have been the hardest-hit areas of commercial real estate over the past year as the pandemic forced many businesses to shut down temporarily or operate on a limited basis.

But even as the U.S. economy appears set to roar back to life this year, as many economists now predict, demand trends for commercial real estate could take longer to recover as businesses reassess their post-pandemic needs.

This means higher vacancy rates and declining rents this year, especially for retail and office property owners, said Thomas LaSalvia, senior economist with Moody’s Analytics.

“We see such potential and plenty of anecdotes and early data of actual shifts in how we work and how we shop,” he said. “The structural changes that are going on still give us pause to say that we’ve entered a recovery in terms of office or retail.”

So far this year, the commercial real estate market has seen some positive trends, as many businesses that had to shut down or operate on a limited basis are being given the green light to open by governments amid a pullback in new coronavirus cases and a ramped-up rollout of vaccines.

In March, the national unemployment rate fell from 6.2% to 6% and employers added 916,000 jobs, the most since August. That included 216,000 positions at restaurants, hotels and bars — the sector most damaged by the pandemic.

And this week, the International Monetary Fund forecast that the U.S. economy will grow 6.4% this year. That would fastest annual pace since 1984 and the strongest among the world’s wealthiest countries.

Still, commercial real estate owners face uncertainty as tenants reevaluate their needs. Will businesses that rented office space and spent the last year with most or all of their employees working from home need as much space? Will retailers that shifted more of their operations online during the pandemic cut back on storefronts? Will businesses resume spending on travel after having embraced video conferencing?

The full impact of these assessments may not be known for a while, as commercial property leases tend to run between five and 15 years. Still, some of the economic fallout from the pandemic is already visible in national commercial real estate industry data.

The vacancy rate for retail space increased to 10.6% in the first three months of this year from 10.2 percent a year earlier, according to Moody’s Analytics. And average effective rent, what’s left after taking out concessions offered by landlords to woo tenants, dropped 1.5 percent.

Moody’s Analytics is projecting vacancy rates for retail properties will climb to 11 percent or 12 percent as businesses reconsider their space needs after last year, when the percentage of retail purchases made online nearly doubled to 20 percent.

“We actually expect that to rise closer to 25 percent by 2025,” LaSalvia said. “This pandemic forced a lot of people to pull the bandage off in terms of being willing and able to shop online.”

For office space, vacancies rose to a rate of 18.2 percent in the first quarter from 17 percent, while average effective rent fell 1.8 percent, according to Moody’s Analytics.

Before the pandemic, office vacancies had been trending around 15 percent to 16 percent nationally. LaSalvia expects that to climb to 20 percent by 2022, then decline gradually to 17 percent by the end of the decade.

Hotels have had it particularly rough. Occupancy rates sank a year ago after global leisure and business travel all but ground to a halt. The monthly occupancy rate had been running well above 60 percent in 2019 and stood at 65.7 percent in February 2020. Two months later, it sunk to 20.6 percent, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.

Occupancy improved to about 45 percent last summer, before easing again. It was 34.4 percent in January, down from 66 percent a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the average revenue per available room, or RevPAR, a key hotel industry metric, was $30.27 in January, down 64 percent from a year earlier.

Hotel occupancy is expected to pick up this summer, as more people receive a COVID-19 vaccine and feel more at ease about travel. Last month, U.S. airport security checkpoints recorded sharp increases in traffic, including more than 1.5 million people in a single day, the largest number since the pandemic began.

“The summer leisure season will be pretty good,” LaSalvia said. “But the business travel is going to hold us back a little bit this year and it’s going to take maybe a couple of years before that really picks up again.”

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As Portland developer Walt Bowen builds one downtown tower, he’s exiting another.

The office space within the 19-story Broadway Tower has sold to Principal Real Estate Investors for $132.3 million. The price equates to $756 per square foot.

The sale comprises 175,000 square feet of office space on floors nine through 19. The office space was 99 percent leased to tenants including Amazon, Markowitz Herbold, Cable Huston, Chicago Title and Lawyers Title.

The seller was a limited liability company, BDC/Broadway Office, linked to Bowen. His BPM Real Estate Group opened the building in November 2018. BPM is the developer of the Block 216 mixed-use tower now under construction in downtown Portland.

The transaction closed in early March. The purchase does not include the Radisson RED hotel on the first eight floors of Broadway Tower, which is located at 1455 S.W. Broadway, near Portland State University.

The buyer, Principal Real Estate Investors is based in Des Moines, Iowa; it’s a group within Principal Global Investors.

Newmark Knight Frank represented the seller. The sale includes “some of the very highest quality office space that Portland’s seen,” said Nick Kucha, an NKF vice chairman based in Portland.

“There have been very few high-quality modern office towers built in Portland in the last few years,” he said.

Because of that, Broadway Tower attracted high-quality tenants and eager buyers, he said.

Besides Kucha, James Childress (managing director) and Jeff Hodson (director) represented the seller in cooperation with Kevin Shannon (co-head of U.S. capital markets) and James Ikeguchi (senior financial analyst). Principal Real Estate Investors represented itself.

Available office space in the building was being offered at $35 per square foot on a triple-net basis.

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Portland’s office market experienced a mixture of new deliveries and a few high-profile move-outs in 2018 that contributed to a bubble of oversupply, according to year-end data.

Annual absorption in 2018 was negative for the first time since 2009, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, as more supply was added to the market than was absorbed by new leases.

“In 2018, we saw a good amount of deliveries at the same time as we saw a couple of larger tenants either retrench or (try) to operationalize efficiency and (move) to suburban locations,” said Patricia Raicht, senior vice president for research at JLL.

So far, the supply has had no apparent impact on lease rates. Average asking rents in Portland’s core rose 8.8 percent to $36.85 per square foot, according to JLL.

Demand remains strong, particularly among companies looking for a lower-cost alternative to the California and Seattle tech hubs, Raicht said.

“We continue to see interest from other West Coast markets that are looking for an alternative, and Portland stacks up well compared to those and will continue to,” she said.

Tenants that vacated significant office space last year included Wells Fargo, which moved many of its employees from downtown’s Wells Fargo Center to Washington County; Jive Software, which was purchased by Aurea and closed; and The Art Institute, which closed.

Vacancies rose to 13.1 percent in the fourth quarter, according to JLL. Office sales reached almost $1.2 billion in 2018.

Several significant leases were signed, including Genentech taking 61,990 square feet on three floors of the Lloyd Center Tower from American Assets Trust, and Vacasa leasing 60,152 square feet from Security Properties in the Pearl District’s Heartline Building, according to Kidder Mathews.

The largest sale was the Moda Tower for $176.25 million to Unico Properties and ARA.

Nike added 412,000 square feet with construction of Building A at the company’s Beaverton headquarters, Kidder Mathews reported.

The office construction pipeline has slowed, suggesting the fourth-quarter supply glut will ease. This year’s largest expected deliveries include District Office from Urban Development + Partners and Beam Development, which will bring about 72,000 square feet of office space to market; and 7 S.E. Stark from Harsch Investment Properties, which will have about 70,000 square feet of office space.

In 2020, major anticipated deliveries include 250 Taylor for NW Natural, and the Press Blocks from Urban Renaissance Group and Security Properties, with approximately 135,000 square feet of office space in Goose Hollow.

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Robust leasing activity at new office properties has continued in Portland, with buildings in the Central Business District showing particular strength.

Tech firms and other tenants have provided ample demand for Class A office space. Amazon‘s lease of 83,995 square feet at Broadway Tower, NW Natural‘s lease of 183,500 square feet at 250 Taylor and McAfee‘s lease of 98,820 square feet in Hillsboro were among the major commitments in recent months.

Demand is being driven by so-called “TAMI” tenants – those in the technology, advertising, media and information industries, said Kevin Kaufman, vice president at CBRE.

“Tenants are still looking to their space as a tool to recruit and retain top talent, and so building owners continue to add amenities and provide third spaces,” or nontraditional work spaces, he said.

Deliveries of new space are expected to continue apace this year, but preleasing activity is buoying new projects.

“At least 75 percent of office (space) under construction to be delivered in 2018 is preleased,” Kaufman said. “While you’re seeing lots of new construction, it does not necessarily translate to downward pressure on rents.”

Net absorption totaled 233,789 square feet during the fourth quarter.

Co-working space also continues to provide significant demand, with companies such as WeWork and CENTRL, which took space in the Menashe Properties building in the West End, looking to expand.

Average lease rates during the fourth quarter of 2017 rose 7.5 percent from a year earlier, to $27.66 per square foot, according to a CBRE report. That was also up 1.2 percent compared to the previous quarter.

Office space continues to be attractive to prospective buyers, as well. The 884,941-square-foot Wells Fargo Center, in downtown, sold for $212 per square foot.

Meanwhile, developers have pointed to a lack of available land that has driven up prices for existing industrial space. Supply began to catch up to demand, with some industrial spaces remaining empty upon delivery in the fourth quarter, according to a JLL report. Still, vacancy was tight at 3.8 percent. Nearly 3.6 million square feet of industrial space was under construction.

The U.S. Postal Service is building a new distribution center near Portland International Airport, and e-commerce continues to drive demand for distribution facilities.

The Rivergate Industrial District near the airport was the scene of significant activity, with rents up 9 percent in the Port of Portland-owned submarket, according to JLL.

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Gramor Development‘s Waterfront project in Vancouver, Washington, has secured a major office tenant.

Chicago Title and sister company Fidelity National Title have leased more than 10,000 square feet, occupying the entire second floor of the Block 6 East building. Construction is under way and projected to finish this fall, with the title companies moving in shortly thereafter.

Chicago Title and Fidelity National Title will have approximately 40 employees in the building, according to a news release.

The Waterfront is planned to eventually become a 32-acre, $1.5 billion development along the Columbia River.

The development comes at a time of pent-up demand for new office space in Vancouver, said Barry Cain, owner and president of Gramor Development.

“There are a lot of people who are in Vancouver now who have not had this opportunity to be on the waterfront, to be in a new building,” Cain said. “There’s a number of businesses in Portland now that maybe should be in Vancouver, and they haven’t considered it, and they should be.”

M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust previously agreed to lease the top two floors in the 70,000-square-foot, seven-story Block 6 East building. Building amenities include bike rooms, showers, high ceilings and river views.

The Waterfront has attracted restaurants and bars, with Ghost Runners Brewery, Twigs Bistro and Martini Bar and WildFin American Grill taking space in the development.

In October, Gramor installed a 75-foot-long mast at the Grant Street Pier.

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Portland office vacancies rose in the third quarter as deliveries of new space outpaced demand, according to a report released Monday.

Vacancies rose to 9.9 percent during the third quarter, according to Jones Lang LaSalle. That was up by 0.9 percent from a year ago.

“Basically what you started seeing coming through last quarter is this frontal wave of construction we all know is going on right now,” said Tim Harrison, a senior research analyst at JLL‘s Portland office.

Average rents slipped to $28.22 per square foot, down 9 cents compared to the second quarter. Harrison said rent growth will continue to moderate because of new supply coming online. “We’re going to start seeing (rent growth) come down to more sustainable levels, more normalized levels,” he said.

That’s in keeping with national trends, Harrison said. As the economic expansion continues, more projects that were conceived a few years ago are being delivered.

New construction is already being factored into current asking prices for leases, Harrison said.

Year to date, the Portland office market has absorbed 339,845 square feet of space, according to JLL. Preleasing remained strong for projects such as Under Armour‘s build-to-suit transformation of a former YMCA in Southwest Portland.

Nearly 1.7 million square feet of office space is under construction.

Several projects are expected to come to market in the fourth quarter of 2017, including the first of two six-story Field Office buildings in Northwest Portland, Menashe Properties‘ six-story building at Southwest 12th Avenue and Morrison Street in the West End, the Heartline office building in the Pearl District and the Leland James office rehabilitation project in Slabtown.

“We’ve got a construction pipeline that is still pretty full, even after the current construction starts to deliver,” Harrison said.

Some projects have been approved by the Portland Design Commission but have not seen construction start. Two include a 10-story proposal at the site of the Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple at Southwest Third Avenue and Taylor Street, and the sprawling Press Blocks project in Goose Hollow.

“There’s a number of projects proposed and just sort of waiting,” Harrison said.

Demand should continue to drive absorption even after more projects open for leasing, Harrison said.

“We had a really strong third quarter in terms of demand,” he said. “Things are still pretty positive for the Portland office market.”

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The latest Green Building Adoption Index study has ranked Portland no. 16 in the nation for percentage of green certified office space. The study, by Maastricht University and commercial real estate company CBRE, ranks the top 30 U.S. markets.

Portland climbed two spots from last year; this was the fourth annual study. It found that 6.43 percent of Portland’s buildings have achieved Energy Star status. Also, the city had the 13th highest percentage of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-rated buildings at 3.76 percent.

In the country’s top 30 markets, 10.3 percent of all buildings surveyed are Energy Star labeled, while 4.7 percent have LEED ratings.

Much of the information came from city sources. Portland passed a Commercial Building Energy Performance Reporting ordinance in 2015. The ordinance requires owners of nonresidential commercial buildings with at least 20,000 square feet to report energy use on an annual basis. Nine of the nation’s 10 largest metro areas in the study have such reporting laws.

Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston and Minneapolis/St. Paul took the top five spots in the study.

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