Jordan Menashe said he was tired Friday afternoon — and rightfully so.
The CEO of Portland-based Menashe Properties just sealed the deal on the real estate investment company’s largest deal ever, the $113 million acquisition of the historic Medical Dental Building in Seattle.
“It’s done,” he said, “but I’m exhausted.”
The deal comes just over a month after Menashe Properties sold its Creeksides at Centerpoint office park in Kent for $39 million. That transaction helped fuel a 1031 exchange — an IRS code that allows investors to avoid capital gains taxes by reinvesting proceeds from the sale of one asset into another one — for the Medical Dental Building.
Menashe Properties acquired the 18-story, 300,000-square-foot Medical Dental Building, which sits at 509 Olive Way downtown, from Seattle’s Goodman Real Estate. The latter firm bought the property in 2005 for $38 million.
JLL directors Kevin Freels and Logan Greer, as well as senior managing directors Michael Leggett and Gerry Rohm, led the transaction.
The building is home to more than 130 tenants, including private medical and dental offices and other office tenants.
That wide array of tenants may have made institutional investors hesitant to buy the building, as the current trend is to clear out buildings and find larger tenants who will occupy multiple full floors.
Menashe, however, said he sees the Medical Dental Building as an “ideal legacy asset” — one that Menashe Properties will add value to largely through the service it will provide tenants.
“A lot of people shied away from this because they want to vacate these buildings and get full-floor tenants,” he said. “That’s not our model. We’re willing to work with tenants of any size.”
Menashe also said he likes the location of the building, which sits not far from Amazon’s headquarters, a new Apple facility and a planned multifamily project that will bring 1.8 million square feet of residential space to the neighborhood.
The Seattle office of the Broderick Group, represented by Damon McCartney, Maverick Olivares and Ryan Nelson, will handle the leasing of the building for Menashe Properties.
The acquisition is the latest in a string of transactions for Menashe Properties, which has been on a growth track in recent years. Menashe said that growth has been able to happen in large part because of the foundation that his father, Barry Menashe, laid over the firm’s 45-year history.
“Without the base that Barry started 45 years ago, the path of growth wouldn’t be on the track that it has been,” he said.