american bank building
The American Bank Building, with an electric vehicle event at Pioneer Courthouse Square in the foreground.
(Drew Vattiat/The Oregonian)
A Chilean real estate manager's purchase of a downtown office building may portend more foreign investment in Portland real estate.
With Portland investor ScanlanKemperBard Cos., the fund manager Independencia S.A. paid $45.1 million for the American Bank Building, a 15-story tower just north of Pioneer Courthouse Square.
Independencia, which manages investments on behalf of Chilean pension funds, had previously invested in U.S. real estate mostly on the East Coast, with a U.S. headquarters in Miami.
"This is something of a milestone in South American capital winding up on the West Coast," said Bob Scanlan, the Portland firm's chairman and CEO. "I think that is significant."
SKB had recently made a run at buying a San Francisco biomedical building with Independencia in San Francisco, but that deal never closed.
Paige Morgan, a senior vice president for office capital markets at brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle, said the one sale doesn't make a trend, but "interest from foreign groups has picked up dramatically," she said.
Scanlan said Independencia was looking for an investment it would hold for a long period of time, and it was impressed by a building that lies in the retail and office core of downtown Portland.
The acquisition was also notable for SKBin that it had, with another partner, sold the same building for $35.2 million in 2008 as part of a portfolio.
"You don't get many opportunities to buy something you've sold," said SKB President Todd Gooding.
-- Elliot Njus