added some certainty to its big hole in the ground last week, announcing that construction on the Park Avenue West office tower would resume… though likely not before 2013.

That leads us to ask… what’s happening with Portland’s other long-unbuilt office tower, One Waterfront Place?

Melvin Mark brokerage Vice President Tom Becic says the 12-story, 270,000 square-foot office tower project is shovel ready and is just waiting on a large (100,000-square-foot or so) tenant to move forward.

That’s not really new news, of course. One Waterfront Place has been a project on the books since 1999. The office tower and adjacent garage, proposed by developers Jim Winkler and Bob Naito, was the subject of a disposition and development agreement with the Portland Development Commission . Between 2000 and 2010, that DDA was amended or restated eight times. The final PDC agreement expired this January.

Becic says he still expects to see PDC and the city supporting the project when it goes forward, in one way or another. That’s because he believes the building supports the city’s goals of green development as it has been pre-approved at LEED platinum status. He also suspects a tenant, possibly coming from outside the city or state, could bring hundreds of jobs, which is another prospect that could merit local government support.

The Park Avenue West announcement on Friday was a mix of good and bad news: on the one hand, certainty is a good thing – as long as TMT can stick with its 2013 construction restart date. On the other hand, however, the timeline is a sort of resignation on the part of TMT, acknowledging that it doesn’t think it will have a tenant able to move in for another four years (at the end of 2015.)

Becic feels like One Waterfront Place can do better than that, and could even be “ready to go faster” than already-started Park Avenue West, because the One Waterfront Place project doesn’t need to dig a hole for underground parking.

“An advantage for us is that we’re ready to rock and roll with the right tenant,” Becic said. If that happens, permits will be ready in “weeks, not months,” he said, and the building could be open in two years. The project already has financing secured, pending a tenant agreement, Becic said.

(Note: the broker on Park Avenue West said that project could go forward before 2013 if it secured a tenant, as well. Between now and then, however, the team is moving the crane-off the site and constructing an 8-foot wall to serve as an art project for local youth – to make the next two years of presumed inaction more attractive for passersby.)

Representatives on both projects agree that the low Class-A vacancy rate in Portland is positive for their projects. According to Grubb & Ellis’ recent analysis, Portland’s Class A commercial vacancy rate in the third quarter of 2011 was just 6.5 percent, which means that Portland has the second-lowest vacancy rate of any major metropolitan area in the country.

That will be good news for the projects – but only if a large tenant starts looking for space and picks one of those two buildings to move into. In “normal” economic times, financing may have been available for these projects on a speculative basis – that is, without a tenant already on board. For now, the projects will be completely dependent on tenants. Where are they?

PS: Former 91ĘÓƵ reporter Nick Bjork predicted that one of these two projects would go forward this year. Is that still a plausible prediction?

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Well, it seems as if 91ĘÓƵ staffers aren’t the only people with the forward-thinking idea of turning big, hole-in-the-ground construction sites into mega plastic ball pits.

This fake, albeit well done, “,” was spotted last week hanging on a fence outside the former Vitamilk Dairy site, a three-acre parcel in Seattle’s Green Lake area that has sat vacant for nearly three years. According to the My Green Lake Blog, the site, which is home to a long stalled mixed-use development project, is often referred to by neighbors as “Green Lake’s big hole.”

According to the faux land-use notice, the project would consist of one ground-level ball pit containing 1.2 million cubic feet of rainbow plastic balls with parking for 171 bicycles, 65 unicycles and 13 tricycles. There would also be a huge slide, a lifeguard station, a trampoline and a rescue claw.

The big hole in the ground is similar to downtown Portland’s hole in the ground, the stalled office tower project. A little over a year ago, the 91ĘÓƵ newsroom made some suggestions for what to do with the 40-foot hole as we wait for construction to resume. No. 2 on the list was a ball pit. I just wish we would have thought of the land use notice idea first.

Tip of the hat to for the picture and the post. Glad someone found it as amusing as we land-use nerds.

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Online dating services seek to connect parties who may match well but would likely never meet.

Now the American Institute of Architects wants to use this concept to link two specific groups – developers of stalled construction projects and real estate investors searching for opportunities – via an online database. Officials believe the website could provide a boost for not only the construction industry, but also the entire U.S. economy.

“The idea in the near future is to create a Match.com-type site for those looking to invest and those developers with stalled projects,” said Paul Mendelsohn, vice president of government and community relations for the AIA and a driving force behind the project. “We’ve learned from our membership that access to credit is one of the major hurdles, so through this mechanism we hope to help find some of that funding.”

Mendelsohn said the AIA is looking for projects with features inherent for success, but that are not moving forward solely because traditional lenders are adopting conservative policies.

Projects in the database would be categorized by project type, location, energy efficiency components and other features. The database wouldn’t rank project feasibility, Mendelsohn said, but it would provide as much information as an investor would need to make a decision.

AIA officials are preliminarily targeting mid-September for a launch of the basic site; expansion would take place in ensuing months. Mendelsohn said the association has received a lot of inquiries from investors, but it is just now working toward compiling stalled projects from around the country.

Saundra Stevens, executive vice president of both the Oregon and Portland chapters of AIA, said local members are excited that the AIA’s plan is moving forward.

Local developer Jim Winkler said he could definitely see how the database could aid some people. He cited inexperienced developers who have an inherently good project but need some gap financing to make it work.

Winkler is working with Bob Naito to develop One Waterfront Place, a proposed 12-story, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum office tower in Northwest Portland. But the database probably wouldn’t help the stalled project, Winkler said.

“It’s interesting, just not for us,” he said. “For us, it’s about getting the tenants, not the financing. We can get the financing if we have the spaces leased.”

Winkler added that most established developers can get financing for office, industrial or retail projects if they have a good list of committed tenants. He said there would be no point in moving forward with a project if there were no one to occupy it.

“ First & Main, ODS Tower and Fox Tower – those were all built with no tenants,” he said. “But that just isn’t happening anymore.”

Another stalled project in Portland is Park Avenue West, last proposed as a 26-story, mixed-use tower. Construction of the downtown Portland project was put on hold in April 2009 because lenders’ leasing requirements were not met. The project team has made numerous attempts to sign additional leases, and retool the building.

Vanessa Sturgeon, president of TMT Development, which is developing Park Avenue West, said she had not heard about the AIA database but would look into it further. When pressed if securing additional financing would push the project forward, she declined to comment.

While the AIA is hoping the database will restart projects, Mendelsohn said the bigger goal is to compile much needed data on how many and why projects are stalled.

“The original idea for this is to gather information to get in the hands of policy makers,” he said. “Getting the building sector back on the streets will not only help architects and the others in the industry, it will help jump-start the entire economy.”

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Airport construction projects around the country have been put on hold this week after Congress failed to pass a new funding reauthorization for the Federal Aviation Administration before it expired. However, projects in the Port of Portland will not be affected, according to Port spokeswoman Kara Simonds.

The FAA’s $16 billion budget was held up because of a disagreement between parties about a $16 million subsidy program for rural airports. The administration’s last reauthorization ran out when Congress had not yet passed a budget before adjourning for the weekend. About 4,000 FAA employees face temporary unemployment and a number of construction projects will be stalled as they await funding.

The furloughs won’t affect FAA-funded projects at the Port of Portland, however, according to Simonds.

“At this point we don’t anticipate any delays,” Simonds said.

The port is currently managing two projects funded by FAA grants: reconstruction of south runway at Portland Airport and construction of taxiway D at Hillsboro Airport. Both projects are already under way and are drawing FAA grant funds from accounts to which money has already been allocated, Simonds said. Because the projects aren’t waiting on FAA money, they won’t be delayed.

The FAA’s Airport Improvement Program will process new airport grants while the administration is in limbo, however, as many of the administrative staff are furloughed, according to a statement released by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Friday. Projects that have not yet had funding allocated will be delayed until a new FAA budget is passed.

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Park Avenue West may be the shining example here in Portland, but there are numerous construction projects across the country that have been stalled due to a lack of financing.

Now, the American Institute of Architecture wants to help these projects by linking them up with potential investors.

Within the coming months, the AIA will roll out a new database of stalled building projects nationwide that make economic sense but lack the financing to be completed. The database will be accessible to potential investors with an interest in investing in building projects.

According to AIA President Clark Manus, a large part of the success of the U.S. economy rests on the job-creating potential of the design and construction industry, which accounts for $1 in $9 of U.S. gross domestic product.

“For months, our industry has continued to suffer solely because banks won’t lend,” he said in a statement accompanying the announcement.

AIA will collect information for the database through surveys about stalled projects from members of the organization and other building professionals. The organization will then analyze and categorize the identified projects by various factors including building type, location, new construction versus retrofit, and impact on sustainability and livability goals.

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More than a year since Skylab Architecture announced the Weave Building would be built on West Burnside Street, firms involved with the project say they’re still waiting to hear when construction will begin.

According to Mark Denyer of MFIA Engineering, a mechanical engineering firm working on the Weave project, owner Jeff Kovel needs to lease out a percentage of the building before he can secure a construction loan. Until those tenants are secured, the project is on hold.

“We have taken our drawings (for the Weave) through design development level,” Denyer said. “Those are ready as soon as the owner gets the go-ahead to continue.”

Kovel confirmed that the holdup is related to the need to sign on more tenants but declined to comment further.

Scott Leverenz, a project engineer with Jacob’s Heating, said his firm was excited when it learned in September 2009 that it had been chosen as HVAC contractor for the Weave. But the firm is still waiting for paperwork from Kovel to make it official, Leverenz said.

This isn’t the first Portland project that the firm has seen stall lately, Leverenz said.

“Even the best of projects have been getting stalled because of financing issues,” Leverenz said. “It’s making it very challenging on our end. The financing nightmare paired with permit people being laid off at the city means projects are taking longer to go through to the construction phase.”

The Weave was first announced in 2008 as a 27-story tower that would become either a boutique hotel or luxury residences with ground-floor retail. City height restrictions, however, led Kovel in late 2008 to reduce the tower’s design to 10 stories. As condo projects around the city struggled, Kovel decided that offices would occupy the Weave Building’s upper floors instead of residences.

Now, the Portland Development Commission is in talks with Kovel to provide financial assistance for the Weave. Part of the city’s economic development strategy is offering financial assistance to businesses interested in relocating to Portland. According to Lisa Abuaf, central city manager for the PDC, a line item in the South Park Blocks Urban Renewal Agency budget for fiscal year 2009-2010 has $500,000 allocated to the Weave for such purposes. But that amount could change, depending on negotiations with Kovel, Abuaf said.

“PDC resources have been tied to the project as an economic development effort based on the tenants being targeted for the building,” Abuaf said. “(Jeff Kovel) has been pursuing apparel and design companies, which is one of the cluster industries PDC is working to bring to Portland. The amount of assistance we will provide is still up for discussion.”

As currently planned, the project would be 10 stories, with 50,000 square feet of space. LEED platinum certification is being pursued.

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