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Construction on the Park Avenue West Tower in downtown Portland, shown in April 2010, is suspended for now. The developer is preparing plans for a reconfigured with a greater emphasis on housing.

(Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian)

There are still no workers at the downtown Portland pit left behind when construction of the Park Avenue West Tower stopped in 2009.

But work is underway on a revamped configuration for the long-stalled project. When construction starts again, it may be on a tower newly focused on residences rather than offices, a public land-use notice reveals.

’s new proposal calls for increasing the tower’s height from 26 to 30 stories, now with 15 floors of housing and 13 floors of office space. The addition will bring the total height to 460 feet.

A rendering of the Park Avenue West Tower created by TVA Architects, the firm that designed the planned building.

Park Avenue West was proposed as a 33-story mixed-use tower with 10 floors of luxury condos. Later on, plans called for cutting the condos for a more traditional office-and-retail tower at 26 stories.

TMT President Vanessa Sturgeon called the new plans “exploratory” in nature.

“The residential market … has done tremendously well over the last few years,” Sturgeon said. “We’re considering what the best is for that property.”

She added that the company still plans to begin construction again by the end of the year,

.

Reintroducing a residential element now may help secure financing for the project as a whole.

Although Portland has one of the lowest office vacancy rates in the country -- second only to San Francisco, brokerage

reported last week -- and downtown rental rates are the highest they’ve ever been, office construction remains minimal.

“They still need to go up a little more before the Class-A rents are high enough to justify new construction,” said Patricia Raicht, vice president for research at Jones Lang LaSalle in the Northwest. “We still have a little ways to go there unless a developer can secure a pretty substantial pre-lease commitment.”

Apartment construction, on the other hand, is underway across the city, including in the downtown area. And

, proposed by

, is making its way through the planning process.

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“The development challenge is getting enough rents on the greater costs you have on a high-rise apartment project,” said John Petersen, president of

. “If you can satisfy that, there would be capital available.”

Condos are a less appealing option to lenders, Petersen said, but that may be changing as home prices rise. The high-rise condo market, over-saturated leading into the housing crash, has mostly dried up.

“I think we’re getting close to where it’s time to build some,” he said. “It will make sense sooner or later. Probably sooner than people think.”

Construction on the Park Avenue West Tower, located at started just as the economy turned sour in 2008, but TMT plowed ahead without financing in place. By 2009, however, work was halted, leaving behind one of the city's most prominent bruises from the recession.

After sailing through a 2010 restart target as the recession cut deeper than expected,

and set a new construction deadline of the end of 2013.

And over the past few months, architects for the developer have been inspecting the existing construction and applying for minor tweaks to the tower permits, apparently with an eye toward bringing back construction workers.

-- Elliot Njus