Trust Unloads Four Buildings in Salem

SALEM, OR-A family trust recently sold four adjacent buildings in Downtown Salem. All except the smallest sold to a tenant. The pick of the litter is the Steusloff Building, an 11,000-sf concrete structure on the corner of Court and Liberty, the Hollywood and Vine of Salem, says Wes Bouche, vice president of Pioneer Trust Bank, which managed the properties for the Steusloff family.

The building is anchored by a Starbucks coffee shop and Jackson Jewelers, a tenant of the building since 1944 and also its new owner. Phil and Ralph Jackson–their father opened the jewelry store there in 1944–had to pay $557,000 in order to out bid another buyer bent on getting his hands on it. Phil tells GlobeSt.com the building realistically should have sold in the $350,000 to $400,000 range, but that it’s better to own the building at that price than to not be in control after nearly 60 years in the facility.

“We’ve paid for numerous improvements to this building over the years–we put on the granite front, remodeled three times, redid all the HVAC–and to relocate could cost $300,000 and we’d never find a better location, so we had to look at the big picture” says Phil, who hopes to find a tenant for the vacant second floor of the building. “This way, if the store isn’t passed onto the next generation, at least we’ll have something marketable.”