That’s what office market guru Sam Zell says.

The Chicago billionaire made a fortune in the office market. He built a nationwide office tower empire with his Equity Office Properties Trust and then made a bundle selling it.

His disastrous purchase of the Tribune Co. aside, Zell’s contrarian streak has served him well over the years.

When outsourcing to India was becoming a favorite target of politicians, Zell was extolling the controversial trend’s potential for strengthening American business.

Now, when it has become almost fashionable to predict the coming collapse of the commercial real estate market, Zell is bucking convention wisdom again.

Despite huge debt loads built up during the boom, Zell recently told a group of investment tycoons gathered in Chicago that most tower owners will be able to ride out the storm.

Instead of a rash of foreclosures, Zell sees building owners holding on until business picks up in 2012, then filling vacancies, though at rates 30 percent below peak levels.

Maybe a steady as she goes approach is what is needed right now in the commercial property market.

It has become hip to hyperventilate about the coming foreclosure crunch.

But the Hancock foreclosure has yet to trigger a series of bank auctions of other high-profile Hub office towers.

And if Zell’s right – we may never see that.

There certainly have been lots of breathless headlines in the last few days about plans to expand Boston’s giant new convention center.

The state authority that oversees the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on Monday unveiled plans to nearly double the size of the Rafael Vinoly designed hall.

Of course, it’s big news, but not necessarily all that new.

Here’s my B&T “commercial interests’’ column from June 1.

I’ll quote from it here since the link will only get you the headline and first paragraph.

“If you thought Boston’s new convention center was big, just wait until you see the expansion.

The state authority that oversees the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center is starting to weigh a major addition to the $800 million meet-and-greet complex.

But if you think this means just slapping on a few meeting rooms onto the back of the Rafael Vinoly-designed hall, think again.

In the works are plans that could involve not just more meeting rooms, but also potentially a significant push beyond the hall’s 60-acre footprint to add some badly needed hotels.

Of course there is nothing official out yet.

But a draft report by a consulting firm hired to study a potential expansion – word of which is now filtering out after convention center board members were recently briefed - offers a few clues where this is headed.”

So it definitely pays to read B&T – and the paper’s various blogs, including this one.

I certainly hope brighter days are ahead in 2010 for our battered commercial real estate market.

With downtown vacancy rates soaring, the Hancock tower sold at foreclosure, and the national jobless rate heading into the double digits, it has been quite a year.

If that’s a rather glum overview – I tend to be a glass half full kind of guy - the latest Jones Lang LaSalle market report provides some modest grounds for hope.

Leasing demand should hit bottom this quarter, the report finds.

However, while job losses will continue right into 2010, the employment market will begin to stabilize mid-year. That, in turn, could set the stage in the second half of the year for the first moves towards recovery in the commercial market.

That said, a number of downside risks remain for 2010, according to Jones Lang, including:

· Another 5 to 7 percent tumble in rents;

· A national office vacancy rate that will near 20 percent;

· And delinquency rate on bank commercial loans that will soar past 10 percent.

It looks like Foxwoods has its hands full now even before Massachusetts jumps into the casino market.

My column this week looked the impact casino legalization would have on Foxwoods, which draws more than 30 percent of its gamblers from across the border from Massachusetts.

The Bay State is pushing towards casino legalization, possibly as early as January, even as Foxwoods scrambles to negotiate with lenders over a $2 billion debt load, I noted.

Now it looks like more trouble is brewing for the world’s largest casino on the debt front.

Two days after my column hit the B&T website, the news broke that Foxwoods defaulted on a debt payment. The tribe paid $14.2 million of the $21.1 million owned on one $500 million group of notes.

Standard & Poor’s responded by lowering its rating on Foxwoods’ debt to D, its lowest ranking.

The casino, according to news reports, has insisted the debt issues are separate from the operations of the 7,000 slot casino, which, it contends, won’t be affected.

And while that may sound self serving, there is actually a precedent for this.

OK, how about some common sense stimulus funding.

I had modest hopes the federal government’s $787 billion stimulus package would at least provide a helpful nudge to our struggling economy.

But my hope is turning to disgust as I read about where all the money is going – such as nearly $100,000 for a UMass study on ancient Icelandic pollen.

The Patrick Administration, in charge funneling the federal dollars into the local economy, has certainly taken a lot of heat on this.

And, of course, some of the criticism is unfair given all the bureaucratic red tape and strings the federal money came all wrapped up in.

But let’s put all those excuses, legitimate or not, aside for now. For there are some pretty key projects that would boost the local economy and create jobs that are sitting there, gathering dust.

And bureaucratic mumbo jumbo aside, the fact right now is that the whole stimulus effort is crippled by a filling-the-potholes mentality.

So here’s my list of obvious projects someone in our brilliant state and federal governments should be paying attention to.

* Expanding Boston’s new convention center. A study is due out soon on the possible expansion of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. The expansion has been long contemplated and its going to happen. Why not do it now when construction costs are rock bottom, putting hard hats back to work and saving tens of millions for the state?

* Build a new regional headquarters for the FBI. The FBI has spent almost as long looking for a site on which to build a state-of-the-art fortress/headquarters for its local operations as it has been hunting for Whitey Bulger. Wouldn’t it be nice to see our local congressional delegation do something useful and put a little pressure on the feds to pick a site, any site, and start building?

* Get Harvard’s science complex in Allston rolling again. OK, so this smacks of welfare for the rich. But the fact is, Harvard’s now stalled science complex might simply be one of those transformational projects that rockets our local economy into the next era. And, right now, it’s not happening.

If you’re managing a law firm in downtown Boston, and you are looking for fancy new offices, now is your time.

Of course, that is if you are not so busy trying to weather the economic storm that upgrading office space seems like a concern leftover from flush times.

It’s the classic, recession conundrum. Bad times often present unrivaled opportunities for scoring bargains in everything from office space to homes. But of course, most businesses are not in position to grab such opportunities, and, if they were, well these wouldn’t be hard times, would they?

Boston law firms are no stranger to this classic, age old dilemma.

Anyway, there’s a lot of top quality law firm space on the market in Boston – and it just keeps on growing, according to a new report by Jones Lang LaSalle.

Nearly 15 percent of the Class A tower space controlled by downtown Boston law firms is now on the market. That’s more than 181,000 square feet.

Ropes & Gray and Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge are among top law firms trying to shed surplus space.

The flood of law firm space hitting the market comes amid a wave of cutbacks not seen since the early 1990s recession, which hit the Boston area particularly hard.

All told, there is more than 6 million square feet of built out, ready to go law firm space on the market in cities across the U.S., Jones Lang reports.

I never really got the idea that sleepy Plymouth was going to be the East Coast’s answer to Hollywood.

Boosters of plans to build a giant studio complex in historic Plymouth even took to calling it “Hollywood East.’’

But the financing needed to start construction of the $500 million-plus complex has just fallen, throwing the whole project into limbo.

So how about “Southiewood’’ instead?

With the Plymouth project facing a cash crunch, a competing proposal by Tim Pappas, long-time South Boston condo developer and amateur film producer, appears to be picking up speed.

Pappas is preparing to kick off the city permitting process for plans for a movie production complex on a vacant lot he owns at the corner of West First and E Street.

The proposal calls for a two studio first phase that could later be expanded to include an entire city block, State Rep. Brian Wallace (D-South Boston), tells me.

Pappas so far has done things right when it comes to laying the groundwork for a major project in one of the Hub’s key neighborhoods.

He’s briefed the mayor, held a series of community meetings, and sat down with Wallace and other community leaders.

There’s also apparently a good amount of interest in the project among another key constituency – the small army of Hollywood stars and producers making movies on the streets of Boston and its suburbs.

They would much rather make the short ride over to Southie than to drive an hour down Rt. 3 to Plymouth, notes Tim Kirwan, general manager of the new InterContinental, which has emerged as a favorite home away from home for movie casts.

Forget about downtown Boston’s struggling luxury condo market.

If you really want something to worry about, take a look at the city’s new crop of super luxury hotels.

The W Boston recently opened amid one of the worst markets for deluxe hotels since the Great Depression.

The city’s new W, which prefers not to call itself luxury but rather a “lifestyle hotel,’’ plans on charging average room rates of $300 a night.

The Mandarin Oriental, which charges even higher rates, recently celebrated its first year in business.

However, exactly how much celebrating is going on among the owners of these flags that cater to the very rich is another question altogether.

While individual hotels don’t report occupancy rates and rents, the luxury class has been the hardest hit of any category in the business.

Revenue per room down 27 percent and daily rates off more than 13 percent, noted Thomas Engel, a Boston-based hotel industry consultant, in a recent interview.

“I would be in disbelief if that hotel was able to achieve its pro forma average daily rate,’’ Engel said of the new W. “The world has just so dramatically turned.’’

Well that’s what a newly released MIT survey on the commercial market suggests.

Commercial properties, from office buildings to strip malls, posted a 4 percent price increase in the third quarter, according to an index put out by the MIT Center for Real Estate.

It’s the first price increase recorded by the index, which tracks property transactions by institutional investors, in over a year. And it’s the largest upward surge since well before sales of office towers and the like began to freeze up in the summer of 2007.

Commercial prices are now 36.5 percent below their 2007 peak – a slight rebound from the second quarter, when it was nearly 40 percent.

Demand is also increasing, MIT real estate researchers report.

A separate index developed the MIT Center for Real Estate that tracks demand has jumped 12 percent.

“The big news this quarter is not just that the price index increased, but that transaction volume substantially increased for the second quarter in a row, reflecting the first increase in market sentiment in two years,” said Professor David Geltner, director of research at MIT/CRE.

Still, while hitting bottom is great, given the depth of the decline we have seen, it is going to be long slog back up.