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HILLSBORO, OR-Komatsu Silicon America's former silicon wafer coating facility here has changed hands for the third time in three years, with everyone but Komatsu making a tidy profit on the 46-acre, 400,000-sf property.
Most recently, Benaroya Co. and Real Property Investors sold the asset for $40 million to Solarworld AG, which plans to invest an additional $394 million, transforming the property into the largest solar factory in North America. No broker was involved in the transaction.
Benaroya and RPI, both of Seattle, paid $22 million for the property late last year with plans to transform it into a multi-tenant property before Solarworld began eyeing the property. Benaroya acquired the property from multimillionaire Raymond Park, which paid Komatsu $5 million "plus other consideration" for the campus and an additional 48 acres of adjacent undeveloped land in 2004. Real Property Investors' Mike McKernan tells GlobeSt.com that the sale to Solarworld includes the option for the additional acreage. The option has six months remaining.
The facility is located on Northwest Evergreen Road, west of Shute Road. Komatsu began developing the property in 1996 with a silicon-wafer coating facility that was going to be supplied with wafers made at Komatsu plants in Japan and Taiwan. That same year, confident that demand was strong enough to justify it, Komatsu began development of the $500-million wafer-making facility 12 months ahead of schedule. It was preparing to open the plant in 1998 when the semiconductor industry tanked. The property was never put to its intended use, though its office and warehouse space has been partially utilized over the years.
Komatsu originally listed the property for sale at $80 million. Immediately prior to Park acquiring the property the list price was down to $40 million or about $5 million more than its book value. The negotiated sale price to Park was $5 million "plus other consideration" that was never revealed but it is believed to have related to 3,000 acres in Arizona that Komatsu leases from Park Corp.
The sale from Komatsu to Park closed at the end of March 2004. Parent company Komatsu Ltd. reported a $30-million loss on the transaction. A broker who specializes in the sale of high-tech facilities told GlobeSt.com at the time that Komatsu may have needed the sale to close by the end of its fiscal year, which ends at the end of every March. Komatsu's official comment was that the property was sold "to reduce and make effective utilization of Komatsu Group's assets." An industry source says Komatsu received a nine-figure tax benefit by selling when it did.
Park reportedly spent $5 million beyond his acquisition price to clear the property of hazardous chemicals. The bulk of the building is manufacturing space, but it does include about 50,000 sf of office space.
Solarworld will relocate to the property operations and employees currently located just north of Portland in Vancouver, WA. The company says that by the end of 2009 the Hillsboro property will be able to produce solar silicon wafers and solar cells capable of generating 500 megawatts of electricity per year, making it the largest solar-wafer and cell factory in the US. Production is expected to begin summer 2007.
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