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Another Portland landmark building was auctioned on the Multnomah County Courthouse steps last week—and, once again, no one showed up with cash to buy it.
Owners of the J.K. Gill Building at Southwest 5th Avenue and Harvey Milk Street failed to repay a $27 million construction loan when it was due in December. At the request of the lender, First Interstate Bank of Montana, a judge put the building into receivership in March.
It went up for auction last week and drew no cash offers, leaving First Interstate to bid $5.8 million using the debt it already holds on the building, which totals about $20 million, according to court filings.
Banks often make so-called credit bids when there are no buyers for foreclosed properties. Jackson Tower at Pioneer Courthouse Square suffered the same fate in August. Both buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places, making them more expensive to renovate.
The J.K. Gill Building is named for a retailer that began as a stationery and book store in 1872. Business boomed and the company erected the eight-story flagship store in 1923. Urban Renaissance Group, the Seattle firm that owns Lloyd Center Mall, and Gaw Capital of Hong Kong bought the building from Multnomah County for $9.9 million in 2018, when downtown Portland was attracting tech firms from the San Francisco Bay Area with cheaper space and hipster amenities.
That bubble burst with the pandemic and the George Floyd protests. The J.K. Gill Building suffered more than most because it’s bordered on two sides by Washington Center, the vacant office-retail complex owned by Menashe Properties that became an open-air fentanyl market before being boarded up earlier this year.
The Portland Business Journal reported on the J.K. Gill auction earlier.