The tower is located northeast of Downtown in the Lloyd District and is owned by Ashforth Pacific. The Bank of America Financial Center, owned by Australia-based Terrace Tower, is located Downtown at the base of the Morrison Bridge.

"Our business is growing and we want to make our presence known in the central business district," A.G. Edwards' Portland manager Jim McCulley tells GlobeSt.com. "We are in an environment where our competitors pay up-front money to buy brokers away; we hope to attract brokers with the way we do business, and we think this gives us the presence that will attract brokers who believe in our philosophy that the client comes first."

A.G Edwards is taking 10,000 sf in a long-term lease for which the company is believed to be paying around $30 per sf. The lease backfills a good portion of the space vacated by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which occupied all of the 18th floor as well as the 2,200-sf dome on the top of the building that PWC converted for use as a library, kitchen and server room. That space, and 7,500 sf adjacent A.G. Edwards on the 18th floor, remains available, Terrace Tower EVP Steve Johnston tells GlobeSt.com.

A.G. Edwards will move in this June, joining Bank of America, Smith Barney, Crab Huson and Harris Investor Line in the 330,000-sf 19-story building sitting due east of the new ODS Tower, offering spectacular views of Mt. Hood and the rest of the Cascades. "We're very happy," says Johnston of landing A.G. Edwards, which was represented by Mark Fraser of Colliers International. "We're a financial center, and this is the way it should be."

McCulley says A.G. Edwards has been growing consistently over the past several years and now has 19 or 20 brokers. "We're taking the new space because we expect to continue to grow between 6% and 9% a year," says McCulley, who has been in Lloyd Center Tower for 13 years, having moved once and remodeled twice to make room. "This is a very positive move for us."

As for outfitting the space, he says the crew will be getting new furniture, but it's not going to be extravagant. "We're a conservative firm," says McCulley. "We're not going to go in and make it look like the Taj Mahal."