Rothrock was the lead broker on the $183.5-million sale of Fujitsu's ready-to-use 200-acre semiconductor plant in Gresham Ore., which closed on Friday, just five months after marketing began. He also handled the $90-million disposition of the 93-acre former Matsushita plant in Puyallup, Wash. in 2000. In both cases, the buyer was Microchip Technology, which produces private-label chips for various companies and wanted to be able to meet demand quickly.

"There's a significant change afoot within this market," Rothrock tells GlobeSt.com, explaining that semiconductor manufacturing is more and more often being handled by these third party producers, the majority of which are currently in Asia. "So we will see more of these types of plants sold to Asian buyers entering the U.S.; our objective is to leverage our experience and get involved in some others."

Rothrock says 300 fab plants have closed since 1990, and 62 of those have closed since 2000. Most of those have been gutted, however, which is why Rothrock says that when interviewing for this latest disposition assignment, he lobbied hard for Fujitsu to leave the toolsets for making the chips in place. To do that, he said, would increase the chances of a quick sale because the buyer could be ready for chip production in months rather than years, and the effected government agencies, seeing the rapid replacement of lost jobs, would have more incentive to facilitate the transaction. It all turned out to be true.