Twenty-six floors up, Pat Becker Jr. can see an ever-shifting downtown Portland at his feet.

The CEO of Becker Capital Management — responsible for $5 billion in assets — is part of the change. The investment firm is expanding into slick high-rise offices formerly occupied by a tech company that had the full floor at PacWest Center.

One wide-windowed corner room seems more starship bridge than conference suite, semi-hexagonal seats facing a big-screen TV, as if the whole thing could undock and blast northward past U.S. Bancorp Tower. Down the hall, blue-tinted glass marks the bounds of a workroom with standing desks.

This used to be the Portland outpost of a Connecticut company called Technolutions, a software developer for higher education. It decked out the space with elaborate furnishings designed to appeal to engineers, but maybe not a legacy investment firm.

Technolutions put the space up for sublease, and so now Becker Capital is moving in. It’ll keep the far-out furniture but change the reception desk that bears the former occupant’s name.

Becker Capital’s relocation reflects a microtrend in downtown Portland’s office market: business and professional services companies are expanding into top-notch spaces as some tech firms embrace remote work or relocate to the suburbs.

Construction software provider Trimble, for instance, last year moved from its upscale office on the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge to Lake Oswego. That opened its roughly 40,000-square-foot Portland building for sublease.

Tours of prospective tenants through the former Trimble building have been slow to pick up because the space is so big, said Kelsey Machuca, a principal with real estate brokerage Cresa. She is open to marketing it for a business or professional services firm that might want its conference rooms, or its large cafeteria and training room.

During the booming 2010s, Portland’s thriving startup culture helped buoy the city’s office market. Upstarts like online banker Simple, social networking pioneer Jive Software and business software firm Puppet Labs occupied large spaces in downtown or close by. Big tech companies including Google, eBay and New Relic followed in their wake, establishing large outposts in the city’s core.

“Portland has historically been quite the tech city,” Machuca said.

Google and eBay still have downtown offices, but New Relic has largely moved on. Simple shut down, Puppet sold its business and many other Portland tech firms have either withered or have shifted primarily to remote work.

But as tech companies vacate their elaborate offices, opportunities arise for companies like Becker Capital to step in.

Most of its employees today work on PacWest’s 21st floor, but the company will expand from about 9,000 square feet to more than 15,000, with plans to stay until 2037. It plans to grow from 38 to 58 total workers in the next five years, and many of them will be in Portland. (It has a few offices in other cities.)

Seeing Becker Capital grow its real estate footprint by 60% and lease this floor goes to show that tech companies haven’t broadly returned to downtown offices, said Paul Andrews, a broker with Melvin Mark Cos. who represented Becker Capital on the PacWest deal.

“If they were here,” Andrews said, “this space would’ve been leased quickly.”

Becker considered other buildings over the course of a yearlong search.

“Pat wanted to see if there was anything worth moving to,” Andrews said.

But Becker, whose clients expect him in the office at 6:30 a.m., when the financial markets open in New York, didn’t want to give up one specific perk he enjoys in the digs downstairs.

“I want to see the sunrise over Mount Hood,” Becker said. “That’s what we had, and that’s what we wanted to keep.”

For urban brokers, there’s reason for cautious optimism about downtown lately.

While nearly 33% of downtown offices sat vacant last fall, more leases are being signed in Portland’s core than in the suburbs, according to real estate brokerage CBRE. It’s been that way for three straight quarters.

Patricia Raicht, a longtime Portland commercial real estate expert, said some larger tech companies shrank their offices as they went remote, while business and professional service firms realized they still wanted to be downtown, and they wanted their employees back in the office. In that sense, they needed “commute-worthy” offices, Raicht said.

Still, Raicht’s not counting tech firms out. Homegrown software publisher Panic opted to keep its headquarters downtown, signing a 2023 lease at the new 11W building in the West End.

Meanwhile, giants such as Amazon are implementing return-to-office mandates.

“My professional opinion is those tech companies are going to be back in the market for space when they start scaling again,” she said.

Companies need offices, Raicht added, or else, “How do you train people? How do you have a corporate culture? How do you provide management, mentorship, any of those things?”

Downtown Portland will be more than just “lawyers and accountants,” she said, noting the array of marketing firms, consultants, advertising companies and others who want to be in the city.

Becker, eagerly touring the floor in a sky blue sportscoat and tortoiseshell-style glasses on a recent day, pointed to the things left behind, like a can of compressed air on one of the standing desks.

“It’s almost like a nuclear bomb went off,” the CEO said, “and they all left.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated New Relic had vacated U.S. Bancorp Tower. It has downsized but still has an office in the building. The story has been updated.

— Jonathan Bach covers housing and real estate. Reach him by email at jbach@oregonian.com or by phone at 503-221-4303.

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