If downtown Seattle had a bull in the 1990s, it was 6-foot-2-inch Greg Smith, who led the transformation of his father’s Class B office management company into the most active buyer of downtown properties.

Greg Smith

And yes, those days are over — at least in terms of Smith’s unabashed bullishness. Now caution rules.

“I’m still bullish on Seattle in the long term,” said Smith, one of three principals at downtown Seattle-based Martin Smith Inc., which not only bought a wide array of downtown land and buildings, but also became an active office developer. “But there’s no question we’re in a slowing period right now. The severity of it is what I don’t have my hands around yet. We’re not paranoid, not doomsayers in any way. I’m still optimistic but I’m very cautious.”

For Martin Smith Inc., that translates into pushing forward four or five major downtown office-and-residential proposals but holding back from taking any of them to the expensive step of starting construction.

“We control four or five major development sites, and we’re working toward getting those entitled,” Smith said.

“Once we get to that point, we’re going to market them and when we find a tenant that we find credible and is comfortable with us and us with them, we’ll go forward.”

The newest of those projects is a full block in the Cascade neighborhood north of downtown Seattle, at the Interstate 5-Mercer Street interchange. Martin Smith recently formed a partnership with the Tacoma restaurant supply company Bargreen-Ellingson to propose building a 250,000- to 300,000-square-foot office building on the site of Bargreen-Ellingson’s Cascade store.

Also north of downtown, Martin Smith will apply for permits to develop at least one residential tower on the Martin Smith-owned Lenora Square site, next to Paul Allen’s Quinton Instruments building.

Allen’s Vulcan Northwest late last year teamed with urban grocery developer Don Milliken to turn the Quinton site into a mix of office and housing over a grocery and other retail.

“We want to take advantage of what they’re doing,” Smith said.

In Pioneer Square, a Martin Smith partnership controls a half-block surface parking lot fronting Occidental Mall for which it’s designing a seven-story office building. Martin Smith has hired Mithun architects to design the 170,000-square-foot structure of offices atop 10,000 to 15,000 square feet of retail.

Martin Smith envisions putting the Occidental project’s parking underground by standing the building in a huge underground “bathtub.” The tub style would be new for Pioneer Square but has been used extensively in other parts of the world that have similarly high water tables, Smith said. The tub is a huge liner built into the ground, with an extensive pump system.

A Martin Smith partnership has applied for a master use permit to build a 200,000-square-foot office building adjacent to 83 King Street, which Martin Smith renovated into offices a couple years ago. The new building would be called 505 First Avenue.

Immediately south of Pioneer Square, a Martin Smith partnership proposes the firm’s largest project, a 1 million-square-foot office campus on the 8-acre Wosca site. The Wosca project has overcome some of the obstacles it faces, such as eluding condemnation by the state ferry system when Initiative 695 slashed ferry funding. Martin Smith will ask the city for permission to build up to 125 feet, instead of the maximum of 65 feet now allowed there.

Working with Rob Schwartz of NBBJ as early design consultant, the partnership so far proposes four buildings with 1 million square feet of offices atop 100,000 square feet of retail.

Martin Smith is teamed with the owner of the Metropolitan Grill to one day propose an office building on the financial district block where that restaurant is located.