Delaware-based Multi-Employer Property Trust is a $3 billion collective investment fund whose primary beneficiaries are union pension funds. Riggs & Company, a division of Riggs Bank N.A., of Washington, D.C., is MEPT's trustee, but the buying or leasing of land is done through Seattle-based Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel Inc., which has been busy in Portland on behalf of MEPT.

In March, on behalf of MEPT, Trammell Crow broke ground on a two-building, 488,000-sf distribution center on 23 acres in Rivergate leased under similar terms. In the late 1990s, MEPT also had Trammell Crow develop the 41-acre Alderwood Corporate Center, a three-building, 308,400-sf development at the Port's Portland International Center near the airport.

Industrial isn't MEPT's only interest in Portland. In 2001, Kennedy Associates spent some of its money on the 215,000-sf office and retail building now sitting on Block 2 of Gerding Edlen Development Co.'s five-block redevelopment of the former Blitz-Weinhard Brewery in close-in Northwest Portland. Gerding Edlen sold the development in part to finance the rest of the project, for which only a couple of blocks remain to be redeveloped.