With just over 1.67 million sf in about 29 buildings, the Sunset Corridor is the largest class A office market on the Portland's tech-heavy west side, according to the report. The market saw 108,000 sf of new construction come online in the period and just over 47,000 sf of leasing activity. The direct weighted average annual rental rate now stands at $22.75, according to the report.
The new construction was 108,000-sf class A office building in Hillsboro developed and owned by Synopsys, a Mountain View, Calif.-based software developer catering to the computer chip design industry. Tom Hayes and Steve Marcy of Corporate Property Services are marketing the building for lease at $23.50 per sf, full service. No tenants have been announced.
Still under construction is a 72,000-sf, $12-million build-to-suit project for Planar Systems, a maker of display systems that signed a 10-year, $15-million lease deal late last summer. That's going up at Birtcher Real Estate Group's AmberGlen Business Center, just west of NW 185th on Cornell Road.
Birtcher has seen a flood of new class A space come available at AmberGlen recently. Shortly after completed the 1915 Building, a 95,000 -sf speculative office building, Birtcher saw its anchor tenant in the identical two-year-old 1925 building push nearly 50,000 sf back onto the market at a discounted price. The situation prompted Birtcher to restructure its lease deal with Webridge and reclaim the space on a direct basis.
Up the road, Toshiba Ceramics, which used to own more than 60 acres here and sold the aforementioned Synopsys its land, is selling off its last 20-acre parcel after consolidating operations in Japan at the beginning of the year. The 20-acre parcel, which includes on 54,000-sf building and room for a second one, is listing for $8.5 million.
Toshiba Ceramics' property is located at the corner of Cornell Road and 231st Street, near the Orenco Station, a retail development along the region's east-west light rail line. The Hillsboro plant, the company's only facility outside of Japan, opened more than 10 years ago. Grubb & Ellis' Brad Fletcher, who helped broker the land deal for the building, is handling the disposition as well.
Toshiba Ceramics, which employs 3,000 people worldwide, makes "crucibles" -- highly purified glass bowls used to manufacture silicon wafers for computer chips. In explaining the company's consolidation, Bremkamp said: "Our parent company (in Japan) has exactly the same capability; plus, they have all the new technology."
Meantime, the City of Hillsboro is preparing spend tens of millions of dollars on a new civic center to include a new city hall, branch library, public plaza and mixed-use development. The City Council is scheduled to make a final decision on a general contractor for the Downtown six-acre project on April 2. The cost of the finalists' proposals range form $30.7 million to $36.4 million, with Gerding/Edlen' Development's being at the low end and Specht Development's being at the high end. Trammell Crow's proposal came in at $31.2 million.
In addition to the lead developers, each of the three teams also includes an architect, a construction company and a financier. Gerding/Edlen Development's team includes Portland-based Fletcher Farr Ayotte, Portland-based Hoffman Construction and Bank of America. Specht Development's team includes LRS Architects of Portland, Baugh Construction of Seattle and Bank of America. Trammell Crow Co.'s team includes Group Mackenzie of Portland (with assistance from LMN Architects of Seattle), Howard S. Wright Construction of Seattle and in-house financing.
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