Unico Properties Buys Portland-Area Office Buildings

The Meadows Road properties in Lake Oswego, Ore. Image courtesy of CBRE

Seattle-based Unico Properties LLC has acquired 5800 and 6000 Meadows Road, a two-building Class A office property totaling about 203,000 square feet in Lake Oswego, Ore., from Shorenstein. The buildings are within the Kruse Woods Corporate Park that San Francisco-based real estate investment firm Shorenstein acquired in March 2007.

CBRE’s Pacific Northwest Capital Markets team led by Charles Safley, Paige Morgan and Tom Pehl, represented the seller in the transaction. Nick Santangelo of CBRE’s debt and structured finance team arranged the acquisition loan for the buyer, a subsidiary of Unico Investment Group LLC. The sale price and the loan amount were not disclosed.

READ ALSO: Top Gateway Markets for Office Vacancy

The two buildings were originally constructed in 1999. Located in the Kruse Way submarket, about 8 miles southwest of Portland, Ore., the properties are close to I-5 and OR 217, connecting Lake Oswego to the rest of the Portland region.

Kruse Way is known as the premier suburban office market of Portland, with rental prices second only to Portland’s CBD. The properties are 21 miles from the Portland International Airport and are both within several miles of the Tigard Transit Center Commuter Rail and Tualatin Commuter Rail, both part of the Westside Express Service.

The two multi-tenant buildings share a courtyard and were more than 90 percent occupied at the time of the sale. The five-story 6000 Meadows Road totals 112,250 square feet and features a conference center and shower facilities. The building has about 440 surface parking spaces and some covered parking. The four-story building at 5800 Meadows Road has nearly 89,000 square feet of space. The asset has a Starbucks on the ground floor and about 440 surface parking spaces as well as some covered parking.

Safley said in a prepared statement that the stability of the asset, strong surrounding demographics and improving market fundamentals fueled significant interest in the property. The opportunity to buy in the best-performing office submarket in the region, Santangelo added, was well-received by the lending community, and CBRE was able to secure competitive financing for Unico.

Earlier deals

Unico, a private equity real estate investment firm, currently owns and operates about 18 million square feet of office, mixed-use and multifamily properties across the U.S. Earlier this year, Unico completed Bouldin Creek, a 165,000-square-foot, five-story office building in South Austin, Texas, with co-developers Manifold Real Estate and OakPoint Real Estate.

In January, Unico and Partners Group topped out on a 211,066-square-foot office and life science development in downtown Seattle that is slated to be completed this summer.

READ ALSO: Can CRE Investment Rebound in H2?

Last fall, Shorenstein disposed of another Oregon office property. The real estate investment firm sold Nimbus Corporate Center, a 691,036-square-foot office campus in Beaverton, Ore., to a joint venture between Prescott Partners and a DRA Advisors-controlled firm for $130 million. The Beaverton property was also acquired by Shorenstein in 2007 as part of a $1.1 billion portfolio transaction. Shorenstein had purchased the extensive Oregon portfolio from Blackstone Group, which had acquired the Oregon holdings as part of the record-setting $39 billion acquisition of Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties Trust in early 2007. EOP was the nation’s largest publicly held office building owner and manager at the time with 513 properties across 100 million square feet of space. Blackstone began selling off many of the properties immediately including more than 4 million square feet of office space in the Portland region.

In December 2019, CBRE’s Safley and Morgan along with Trevor Kafoury represented Shorenstein in the sale of another Oregon office asset. Clarity Real Estate acquired River Forum, a two-building office campus in Portland, from Shorenstein for $57.5 million.