Post Redesign, Prendergast Caters to Jostled Tenant Young & Roehr

PORTLAND-The opportunity to nearly double the size of his Pearl Block office development was one Pat Prendergast couldn’t pass up. Doing so, however, sets completion back six months and puts at risk the project’s one signed tenant, the growing advertising firm Young & Roehr.When Prendergast broke ground on the project at 10th Avenue and Lovejoy Street, he had no signed tenants and plans for an 80,000-sf, six-story project to be completed at the end of 2001. It quickly became less speculative when leasing agent Mark Fraser of Colliers International signed Young & Roehr for the second floor of the project and a portion of the first.

Just before Prendergast was to begin pouring concrete, however, the city decided to extend a height bonus on nearby properties to Prendergast’s property and several others. Having wanted to go higher in the first place, Prendergast happily had Bob Thompson of Thompson Viavoda & Assoc. redesign the building as a taller, skinnier office tower.

The changes not only altered the space Young & Roehr had signed on for, but it also pushed the project’s completion from the end of 2001 to the middle of 2002, six months later than Young & Roehr had planned to relocate from their current offices in the Skidmore Fountain Building. To try and ease the pain, Prendergast is giving Young & Roehr its pick of floors in the redesigned building, and remains “hopeful” he can still accommodate the growing ad firm. Young & Roehr CEO Bob Warren remains undecided.