C.E. John's Pearl Project Back to Five Floors

The project was originally envisioned as a five-story office and residential project. Last spring, when the city loosened height restrictions and the office market seemed healthy, C.E. John decided to redesign the project into a 10-story building with residential over office and ground-floor retail.

Now its back to the original number of floors, but this time there will be no office space, says Perniconi, just apartments, and Trammell Crow will be the lead developer. Ankrom Moisan is designing the project.

"We really didn't want to do condominiums and like everyone else we can't quite figure out the office market in Downtown Portland at the moment," says Perniconi, who also has stalled a 21,000-sf office building on the shore of the Columbia River in Vancouver. "Our specialty is mainly retail."

Indeed, C.E. John is just now finishing up a $17 million redo of its 650,000-sf Lancaster Mall in Salem and is now in design review for a major redevelopment of its 410,000-sf Beaverton Mall. The firm also recently the newly expanded its Salmon Creek Shopping Center in Vancouver to 80,000-sf and a completed a 10,000-sf project at 39th Street and Sandy Boulevard in the Hollywood District of close-in Northeast Portland.