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A downtown Portland building with a dry leasing history is now up for sale.

The Commerce Building, at 225 S.W. Broadway, has been mostly vacant since 2005. Four of the building’s six floors are available to lease, and the whole building recently was placed on the market.

“We’ve been trying to lease it for quite a while, and we haven’t been able to get a whole lot of traction,” said Joe Beehler, broker with Colliers International.

The building’s owner, Michael Chu of Hong Kong, bought the building in 2001 with plans to turn it into a hotel, Beehler said. But Chu abandoned those plans and four months ago decided to start actively selling it.

“It doesn’t show particularly well when you’re inside,” Beehler said. “We’ve got one floor that’s close to move-in ready, but the rest of it is kind of rough. You could have trouble getting people to have a vision of what the space could be.”

Beehler said an ideal buyer would be an owner-user. Ideal tenants would be those looking for 4,000 square feet or more at a bargain price – $15 to $17 per square foot, per year, for example, he said.

The building, constructed in 1906, was originally named the Beck Building for Beck Investment Co. It was the first home of the North Pacific district of the Forest Service in 1908. The building also was the spot where, in 1911, John H. Bullock was arrested for his part in an Alaska coal fraud scheme against the federal government. The structure is not on the National Register of Historic Places.

The building’s exterior is made of brick, with a peach-colored facade and green window trim. It has 49,000 square feet with 8,100-square-foot floor plates.

The building has a net operating income of about $24,000. The asking price for the building is $4.9 million.

Two tenants occupy the ground floor: Rugs on Broadway and Silver Dollar Pizza. The US Outdoor Store uses the second floor as an annex.

For details on purchasing the Commerce Building, contact Beehler at 503-499-0065 or [email protected].