Boiled down, the plight of these two high-profile towers isn’t much different than the rest of the struggling properties throughout the Chicago area, and through the Midwest.

Barry Missner, president of the self-named Skokie, IL-based Missner Group, has been handling dozens of receiverships for the courts for office, industrial and other properties throughout Chicagoland, particularly in the more than 20% vacant suburbs. He says he’s seen all sorts of ways for sites to go bad. “There’s just not a clear correlation that you can point to and say, ‘That’s what caused these problem properties’,” Missner says. “Values everywhere went down.”

However, the light at the tunnel may be coming, he says, when you can see banks finish up dealing with their top problems, and properties that were a problem start turning the corner. The dearth of quality bulk office space has spurred some action in downtown Chicago, such as at the former IBM Building on State Street in River North.

After suffering from the departure of its namesake years ago and by losing some of its Lake Michigan views to the new Trump International Hotel and Tower, Prime Group Realty Trust (which is fighting its own takeover battle by Five Mile Capital Partners) has managed to grab the American Medical Association and SmithBucklin to move their headquarters to the building. The AMA will anchor the tower with 300,000 square feet, and will rename it AMA Plaza.

It seems that most investors, owners, tenants and even brokers are stopping to pause this first quarter 2012, waiting to see which way the wind will start blowing. Local giant Jones Lang LaSalle, in its fourth quarter report Tuesday, touted record revenue gains of $3.6 billion – but also announced a temporary global hiring freeze.

Here’s to hoping that in 2012, some of the breezes of market success from the East will start blowing our way.