Copyright The Oregonian
An Alaskan real estate company has purchased the PacWest skyscraper in downtown Portland for an undisclosed price. Real estate firm Newmark announced the sale Wednesday but declined to disclose details beyond that the tower attracted 15 offers before a “new-to-market capital source” — brokerspeak for an out-of-town buyer — won out. The Portland Business Journal, which first reported the sale, noted its buyer as Fairbanks-based Fountainhead Development, which largely deals in hotels. Vice President Wyatt Cerny told the publication his company closed on the PacWest deal Tuesday. Real estate sources also pointed The Oregonian/OregonLive to the Alaska buyer, but members of the Cerny family did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Multnomah County did not yet record a deed with the sale price. Yet if recent trends and vacancy rates are a guide, the sale price will fall significantly below its last trade, amid the ongoing repricing of downtown’s real estate market. A third of downtown offices remain empty, according to CBRE. The 418-foot building, developed in 1984 by Mitsubishi Estate Co. out of Tokyo, last sold to a division of Lincoln Property Co. in 2016 for $170 million. The Lincoln division, LPC Realty Advisors, subsequently invested $44 million to renovate the office building, including its lobby, gym, outdoor terrace and bike hub. Among the most recent leasing activity, law firm Schwabe renewed its lease last year with plans for a remodel of its suite by this summer, and investment firm Becker Capital Management took over space formerly occupied by a tech firm. But 2020 protests, which occasionally morphed into riots, and the COVID-19 remote work trend has forced a broader reset in downtown Portland office property values as white-collar workers fled the urban core. Portland’s largest office tower, Big Pink, sold for $45 million in July, a fraction of its last sales price. In August 2024, another of the city’s largest office complexes, Montgomery Park, sold for $33 million, also at a steep decline in value.
