Nick Bjork//September 28, 2010//
Bids continue to come in – albeit slowly – for the 1901-built U.S. Custom House in Northwest Portland. The building is currently owned by the General Services Administration.
PREM Group – a real estate services company – is the current leader with a bid of $1.9 million for the 78,000-square-foot building at 3:25 p.m. this afternoon.
The auction was originally slated to end Sept. 21. But every time a bidder places a new bid between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on the day the auction is supposed to close, it’s extended one more day.
“I don’t think the people we are bidding against realize how this works,” said Jacob Johnson, president of PREM Group. “They need to make a bid outside of those hours so it isn’t extended.”
PREM Group would turn the upstairs space into its headquarters for its 90 employees. The ground floor would be turned into community space for various organizations around the Pearl District.
“There’s not enough meeting space for the organizations in the Pearl and this would help accommodate them,” said Johnson.
The bid now ends tomorrow at 3 p.m. But the auction could be extended once again if a bid comes in between the above-mentioned hours.