Grand Stable and Carriage Building Up for Grabs

PORTLAND-Hoping to increase their odds for a quick sale, the private local owners of the historic Grand Stable and Carriage property in Downtown Portland recently knocked $225,000 off their original asking price of $3.875 million. The interconnected two-building, 38,000-sf development has sat two-thirds empty since Agency.com walked out on its lease last November following its acquisition by another firm.

Doug Bean & Associates is marketing the property–both for lease and for sale–with Nick Ostroff of Realty Trust Group. “My owner found out from the janitor that (Agency.com) was handing out pink slips to the employees there and contacted the guys in New York who control them,” says Ostroff. “They said ‘yeah, we are moving out’ and we said ‘you owe us $2 million’ and they said ‘sue us for it’ and the owner said ‘OK’ and the result was a cash settlement that I suspect everybody was equally miserable with and now the building is on the market and the seller is extremely motivated.”

The $225,000 discount drops the asking price to $3.65 million, or about $40,000 less than they paid for the property five years ago, according to property records obtained from Oregon Title Insurance Co. According to a flyer out on the property, both buildings were completely renovated, mechanically and seismically upgraded and placed on the National Historic Registrar in 1991. Built in 1886 and 1894, the two structures also enjoy a tax freeze until 2004.