The Bulletin building sold for $13.1 million, gets new name

New owners developing multi-tenant plans for Cascades Tech Center

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- CBRE announced Thursday the sale of the 20-year-old Bulletin building and property on Bend's Westside for $13.15 million to new owners who plan to revamp it for commercial tenants, with a focus on high tech and R&D.

The property, which was marketed as part of Western Communications’ bankruptcy proceedings, was purchased by Chandler Center, LLC.

Paige Morgan and Charles Safley with CBRE’s Portland office partnered with Gardner Williams and Graham Dent with Compass Commercial in Bend to represent the seller, while Dan Kemp with Compass Commercial represented the buyer.

“The Bend Bulletin building offered a unique opportunity to control a large block of quality office and industrial space in a low-vacancy, land-constrained market with limited supply,” said CBRE’s Paige Morgan. “In addition to the existing building, the sale included more than nine acres of land that’s zoned for mixed-use development.”

The Bend Bulletin building totals 86,445 square feet of office and industrial space on 9.78 acres. It was built in 2000 by Western Communications to house the staff and printing press for The Bulletin newspaper. EO Media Group, who acquired The Bulletin earlier this year, will lease a portion of the building.

“This property is located on the highly desirable west side of Bend, near many of our city’s most sought-after amenities,” said Compass Commercial’s Gardner Williams. “As the new owner looks to further develop the property, it will be able to provide tenants a convenient location and a competitive advantage for recruiting employees.”

Kemp told NewsChannel 21 the Bend-based Next Development Group bought the property for redevelopment purposes and that Chandler LLC is a new LLC holding entity formed as part of the process.

He said the new owners plan to rebrand it as the Cascades Tech Center, with intentions to redevelop it as a combination of office space with some clean uses such as research and development, with other uses also possible.

The original asking price for the property was over $20 million, Kemp noted, adding that "there are no plans for additional buildings on the site."

Kemp said said "the property’s MU (mixed-use) zone has some restrictions, such as general warehousing and transportation distribution," in terms of traditional industrial uses, but "we are looking at a wide variety of redevelopment options." He said the final plans will be "really tenant-driven, based on interest."

"We do know it's going to be a multi-tenant building," he said. "We've got some planning underway on how to convert that into a multi-tenant building. We're also in conversations with some larger possible tenants who would take a bigger piece of the building."

The Bulletin has a two-year lease agreement on the downstairs office space, Kemp said, while some changes are planned to the newspaper's former upstairs space. The press is in the process of being removed, he said, as the newspaper is now being printed in Prineville.

"There will be an open house, once we have all the plans finalized, inviting brokers in the community and others interested in what the building is going to turn into," Kemp said.

Thursday's sale announcement noted that Bend was ranked as the “Best Performing Small City” in the nation by The Milken Institute in 2018, which is the third consecutive year the metro has taken that honor.

The organization cited unmatched 5-year job and wage growth, strong high-tech performance and substantial investment in its knowledge economy via the Oregon State University-Cascades Campus. The Bend metro area boasts an unemployment rate of 3.6 percent and projected job growth of 55.7 percent, compared to a national average of 33.5 percent, over the next 10 years.

Dan Kemp and Adam Bledsoe from Compass Commercial Real Estate have been hired to re-tenant the building. Prospective tenants and their representatives can contact them at 541-383-2444. Additionally, a prospective open house is planned for this quarter. If you are interested in attending, please send an email to RSVP@compasscommercial.com with the subject: Bend Bulletin Open House.