Andrew Harnish of Cushman & Wakefield won the industrial deal award. Harnish, an industrial broker for Cushman & Wakefield, won for his work turning a cold call to the owners of the Centric Building in Northwest Portland's Pearl District into five transactions totaling 170,000 sf and $14.24 million that turned the Centric Building into one of Portland's first "telco hotels."

Dave Squire of Grubb & Ellis won the office deal award for his work singing up the Art Institute for 60,000 sf in Gerding/Edlen's Brewery Blocks development on West Burnside Street. Squire worked for two years on the deal before the Art Institute realized the benefits of the location.

The Fox Tower, the 457,000-sf downtown office tower that Tom Moyer started on spec and now has 97% leased--was named office development of the year, while the Columbia Tech Center in Vancouver was industrial development of the year.

The keynote speakers for the event were Carl Panattoni of Sacramento-based Panattoni development, and Jim Johnson, Intel's vice president of technology and manufacturing. After ensuring the audience that Intel was planning to spend its way out of its current economic condition, Johnson focused in on the lack of funding in the state for high-tech education. He called for participation in a new organization called the New Economy Coalition, the goal of which is to double Oregon's engineering grads by creating a top-tier college of engineering and a top-tier biosciences center, among other things.

"We import 80% of our technology workers because this state doesn't value higher education," says Johnson, putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of Gov. John Kitzhaber for a lack of funding. "We've got to make decisions consistent with creating more tech people."

Carl Panattoni of Panattoni Development, which through local partner Mike Wells has been buying up and tying up land all across the region, used the beginning of his keynote address to chastise Interest rate rock star Alan Greenspan for allowing the economy to slip into exactly what he was trying to avoid. "He should have moved in November, and he should have moved two weeks ago," said Panattoni at the Friday morning event.

Panattoni was no doubt disappointed with the Fed Chairman yet again on Tuesday, but he'll remain "very, very bullish on the Portland market," regardless, thanks in part to an urban growth boundary that restricts supply growth. "Portland is insulated, and it well serve us well in the downturn," he says. "We were slow to realize the benefits (of the high-tech boom), and we'll be slow to realize the pain."

Mike Boyd, the 1999 national chairman of SIOR, a Portlander living in Texas and another speaker at the awards ceremony, concurs with Panattoni about the region, saying the early impacts of the high-tech bust that is hurting other cities--like significant amounts of sublease space flooding the market--have yet to be seen here in the Portland region. Boyd predicted things would pick up again in the fourth quarter.