Players Mum About 320,000-SF Pearl Tech Center

PORTLAND-Nobody wants to talk about Pearl Technology Center, a 320,000-sf historic former department store warehouse that FowlerFlanagan Tech Partners paid $14 million in 2000 and then hired DPR Construction to renovate it for use as a telco hotel. The telecom market started to waver in 2001 before any tenant could be signed for the project and then general economic collapse and Sept. 11 ensured that the telecom market wouldn’t be necessary in second-tier markets like Portland for a long time.

In August 2001, GlobeSt.com reported that sources in a position to know about the project said FFTP hadn’t been making loan payments and was trying to refinance or find additional backing to stay out of bankruptcy. Now, sources tell GlobeSt.com that FFTP is largely disbanded, DPR Construction has a $3.5-million lien against the property and Lehman Bros., the lender on the project, is now in control of the building and has several heads together exploring options for the property.

Greg Fowler did not return repeated phone calls seeking confirmation of this information and neither did several top-level officials listed on the FFTP Web site but no longer with the firm. A spokesman for Lehman Bros. also has not yet answered GlobeSt.com queries. A DPR representative declined to confirm the lien on the building, saying only that “demand for that particular market has dried up.”