Colliers Asking $75M for Komatsu Plant, Courting Drug Makers

HILLSBORO, OR-More than 1,000 bio-pharmaceutical decision makers last month were invited to tour Komatsu Silicon America’s former clean manufacturing plant here, which covers 94 acres and includes 422,427 sf of buildings. Colliers International’s Seattle-based Advanced Technology Real Estate Group has the disposition assignment on behalf of multimillionaire Raymond Park, which paid $5 million “plus other consideration” for the property in April 2004. Komatsu reportedly spent several hundred million dollars developing and building out the facility in the late 1990s but never occupied the facility. It was originally listed for sale at $80 million. When Park acquired it, the asking price was $40 million. The “other consideration” Park paid for the property has not been revealed, but it is believed to involve the 3,000 acres in Arizona that Komatsu leases from Park Corp (For previous story, click here. )

. Stephen Rothrock, the Seattle-based SVP of Colliers’ ATREG, tells GlobeSt.com that because the facilities already contain required infrastructure, including cleanrooms and power, a bio-pharmaceutical operation stands to reap substantial cost savings and cut six to 12 months in start-up time. “The semiconductor industry’s current consolidation is positive for other industries,” he says. A prime example, he says, is PeaceHealth’s $16-million purchase of Sony’s former optical disk manufacturing facility in Springfield last year. PeaceHealth is converting the 327,000-sf facility into laboratory and support area for hospitals and clinics in Oregon, Washington and southeastern Alaska. PeaceHealth’s Real Estate VP Jim Werfelman says the company’s second space option would have cost closer to $30 million and not necessarily worked out any better, “so this was a huge savings.” The Komatsu facility is located on Northwest Evergreen Road west of Shute Road, near Intel and TriQuint in Portland’s Sunset Corridor. The building is divisible into at least three separate sections and already has support areas and an office building in place. Rothrock says the reason for the marketing focus on the bio-pharmaceutical industry is that it is one of the few industries where there is a lack of capacity. “Hopefully this type of adaptive reuse is something that can work for them,” he says. “The pharmaceutical industry, which spends $450 per sf developing and building out new facilities and they, are now saying ‘if we can find an existing facility that can be retrofitted for less than half that cost, we will absolutely consider it.’”Now with the value of the dollar dropping internationally, Rothrock says it stands to be an even greater advantage for companies based in Europe and Japan. “Everybody feels the dollar will be down for several years,” he says. “That would be enough to offset the tax incentives” pharmaceutical companies receive by setting up shop in places like Puerto Rico.