Local owners turn to Portland for investment.

William Felton, of William Felton Associates, Inc., and Francis Greenburger, chairman of Time Equities, Inc., along with a group of their investors, have joined together in the purchase of the Murray Business Center, a 342,000 square-foot flex office complex in Beaverton (Portland), Oregon. The purchase price was $16.55 million.

Beaverton, a 10 minute drive from downtown Portland, has recently become the "High Tech" capital of Oregon. With a series of town initiated tax incentives, in addition to Oregon's more educated work force and higher standard of living, many of Silicon Valley's largest technology companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Tektronix have established substantial presence in the Beaverton area. Intel, for example, has just built a $1.3 billion Pentium chip plant in the area and has plans to build another.

The building is host to a number of strong tenants, including Providence Health Plans, Oregon's largest Health Care provider (which leases approximately 115,000 square feet), Stream International (89,000 square feet), and Nike (78,000 square feet).

According to Matthew Felton, one of the principals, "We have seized an exciting opportunity. By zeroing in on the Portland, Oregon market, we were able to find reasonably priced property with returns and upside potential in excess of those normally obtained by suburban office buyers in the Northeast today."

The property is located two blocks from Nike's World headquarters in one of the country's tightest markets, with an overall vacancy of 1.9 percent. Beaverton and the surrounding areas have maintained very low vacancy rates due to the strong demand and limited land availability resulting from the Urban Growth Boundary, a policy prohibiting all development outside of a fixed boundary roughly 15 miles from the central business district.

This regulation, somewhat unique to a major U.S. city, was established in an effort to prevent urban sprawl, and preserve Oregon's natural beauty. The result has been beneficial to property owners, as land prices have been escalating at unprecedented levels due to the fact there is very little land remaining for development.

The property was financed by Chase Manhattan Bank with a first mortgage of $12.83 million. The deal was brokered by Norris, Beggs & Simpson, a local Portland-based team, in conjunction with Newmark & Co. Real Estate Inc.