A national private equity firm has acquired an apartment complex in the Lloyd District for $48.63 million.

CBRE announced today that Chicago-based Waterton Associates LLC has purchased the Axcess 15 Apartments, located at 1500 N.E. 15^th Ave., from Holland Partners Group. Nick Santangelo, CBRE vice president, helped finance and the deal along with Jim Rice, CBRE’s executive vice president.

Santangelo said not many transactions of this size come through the Portland market each year, but that this deal reflects a growing interest he’s seeing from large, institutional investors.

“After going through this process with (Waterton) I know that they’re looking for more out here,” he said. “Generally speaking, most institutional type investors like the stability of the Northwest, especially Portland and the prospects for future job growth out here. I think you just start bringing some of those factors together and it makes the Portland-Seattle market desirable.”

Santangelo said the 202-unit mid-rise Axcess 15 was built in 1990 and was later purchased by Holland Partners Group. Holland invested several thousand dollars per unit on interior and exterior upgrades, which he said, yielded great results in terms of leasing and rent increases.

According to Waterton’s website, units in the building range in size from 651 to 858 square feet and cost between $1,070 and $1,485 per month. Santangelo said Waterton’s purchase is a value-add play in that the company plans to continue with Holland’s strategy to add value to the property via upgrades.

Axcess 15 sits on 1.88 acres, and the 171,830-square-foot building features three courtyards, a fitness center, lounge, controlled access and a parking garage. Waterton has satellite offices in Dallas and Atlanta and manages more than 40,000 apartment units worth $3.3 billion.

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, a Newton, Mass.-based real estate investment trust, has purchased a large government office building in Salem for $30.9 million.

Paige Morgan, vice president of , which represented the seller, said the 233,135-square-foot Capitol City Business Center is currently home to Oregon Department of Justice, the health department of the Oregon Department of Human Services and the Oregon Employment Department. The building is located at 4600 25^th Ave.

Morgan said the previous owner renovated the building, built in 1977, in 2007 after the former tenant, a State Farm call center headquarters, moved out. She said the office building was a good stabilized property and that the purchase was indicative of positive trends the past couple years.

“I think in general our market has picked up,” Morgan said. “2011 was considerably better or more active than 2010 or 2009, and this is part of that trend where there is more interest in buying and more interest in selling from both sides.”

Government Properties owns 67 properties in 27 states, which together comprise 8.3 million square feet of rentable space. The trust leases the majority of its properties to government agencies.

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Portland-based is jumping on what it feels is a hot market.

The company has purchased a three-building, 85,000-square-foot, multitenant industrial property in the Sunset Corridor of Hillsboro for $6.3 million. The facility is located between 2240 and 2260 N.E. Griffin Oaks St., just across the street from the Intel Jones campus.

“It made sense for us right now as we see that the multitenant industrial market is going to be hot, and continue to be so,” said Jordan Menashe of Menashe Properties.

Menashe said the purchase was outside of the company’s typical repertoire in that it was not a particularly value-added deal with an extremely low starting price per square foot. Rather, he said, the company sees the property as a good way to diversify its portfolio.

Office vacancies in the Sunset Corridor have dropped 4 percent to 21.35 percent in the past quarter, according to Norris, Begs & Simpson’s fourth quarter market summary of the Portland-metro area. Two leases propelled that drop: Nike’s lease of a 93,938-square-foot space at Cornell Oaks Corporate Center and the Regus Group’s lease of a 17,689-square-foot space at the AmberGlen Business Center.

Menashe said the Griffin Oaks St. property is 100 percent occupied and currently has about 15 tenants – most of which are subcontractors for Intel. He said that’s good because even when construction of Intel’s D1X fabrication plant – scheduled for research and development in 2013 – is complete, those subs will still be needed for maintenance and care of the semiconductor manufacturer’s systems. Tenants include McKinstry, Quality Plus Services, Foxconn Technology Group and Shanker Logistics.

And while Menashe Properties doesn’t expect the property to provide a huge, immediate return on investment, Menashe said, it will provide a solid one.

“It’s clean, good industrial, multitenant real estate,” Menashe said. “It’s not a home run, but right now there’s not a lot of home runs out there. I’d call this a double, maybe a triple if we’re lucky. But something like this minimizes your risk.”

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Los Angeles-based , as CPT Museum Place LLC, has purchased the Museum Place property in downtown Portland for $55 million.

The seller was Sockeye Museum Place South.

Executives at , who co-brokered the deal along with , announced the sale at the company’s Investor Roundtable, Jan. 4, at the Multnomah Athletic Club.

Located at 1030 S.W. Jefferson St., Museum Place is home to 140 apartment units, of which 20 percent are low income units that serve households at 50 percent the median income or lower, said HFO Partner Tim O’Brien. He said that the average rent was $1,235 a month, or about $1.80 per square foot.

Additionally, the building has 49,242 square feet of retail space with the building’s main tenant, , occupying 48,153 square feet. occupies the remaining 1,089 square feet.

Built in 2003, O’Brien said Museum Place was the first mixed-use building in the country with a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating.

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San Francisco-based has purchased a 126-unit apartment complex in Wilsonville for $10.7 million.

The Illahee at Charbonneau apartments, located at 8755 S.W. Illahee Court, consists of 43 one-bedroom, one-bath units; 17 two-bedroom, one-bath units; 37 one-bedroom, one-bath townhouses; and 29 two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath townhouses.

Thomas Marcus of , the company which brokered the deal, said the complex was 95 percent occupied at the time of purchase.

A pro-forma statement by Tilbury Ferguson listed the property’s net operating income at approximately $690,000 and its capitalization rate at between 6.4 percent and 6.6 percent.

FPA purchased the property from Portland-based via Illahee Holdings, LLC.

FPA is a privately capitalized real estate investment firm that focuses on multifamily properties in high growth markets. The company has completed more than $4.8 billion in acquisitions across the country, according to its website.

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A group of local investors plans to breathe new life into the Commerce Building, a 1906-built office building located in downtown Portland.

A team including Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of the ad agency Pop Art, as well as brothers and property managers Brian and Brandon Anderson, purchased the building from the Chiu 1981 Revocable Trust for $4 million. Both Rosenbaum’s firm, and the company that the Andersons work for, Pivot Property Management, will both occupy spaces in the building

The group plans on putting the building through an extensive renovation that includes a full façade modernization, as well as new elevator cabs, new restrooms with showers, a new gym, a new common conference room and a 75-stall secured bike parking facility. The project is also pursuing a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating for existing buildings.

In addition to a renovation, the six-story, 48,159-square-foot building will also undergo a name change. The building will now be referred to as Broadway Commons in reference to its location at 225 S.W. Broadway.

With Pop Art and Pivot moving in, the building will go from 25 percent leased to 60 percent leased. But the two top floors are still available for lease at about $22 per square foot.

David Hill, Eric Haskins and Jake Lancaster, all of the Portland offices of Grubb & Ellis, represented the buyers. Joe Beehler and Ryan Pennington of the Portland offices of Colliers International represented the seller.

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Honolulu-based Watumull Properties has purchased two Hillsboro industrial buildings, bringing the company’s Portland real estate holding to more than two million square feet.

The company, which owns properties in Honolulu, Denver and Portland – announced this week it has acquired facilities at 1050 N.W. 229^th Ave., and 6850 N.E. Campus Drive, in Hillsboro from AMCO Hillsboro LLC. The two buildings, totaling 83,414 square feet, were purchased for $5.3 million, or $67.37 per square foot.

The purchase marks a continued interest from Watumull in the Portland market. The firm last year purchased the Discovery Center in Portland’s South Waterfront neighborhood for $3.9 million and leased part of the building to the public Southwest Charter School.

Vice President J.D. Watumull said the company sees great investment potential in the Portland commercial real estate market because of its size and quality of life. The company is focused on industrial and retail opportunities in the $2 million to $10 million range in the Portland market, he said.

Both buildings are already leased, one to Merchandising Technologies Inc., and the other to DeMarini Sports, a division of Wilson Sporting Goods.

David Hill, senior vice president of investment services with Grubb & Ellis represented both parties in the transaction and worked with Bradford Fletcher, executive vice president of the industrial group at Grubb & Ellis, who represented the seller.

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A couple of LLCs owned by Clyde Holland of the Vancouver, Wash.-based Holland Residential, has purchased two apartment buildings in Beaverton for a combined price of $53.9 million.

Country Gables, a 288-unit complex located at 14900 S.W. Scholls Ferry Road, sold for $29.25 million, while the 254-unit Club at the Green, located at 4800 S.W. Mueller Drive, sold for $24.68 million. The apartment complexes were constructed in 1991 and 1990 respectively.

Holland is the founder and CEO of Holland Partners and Holland Residential, firms that develop, construct and manage large multifamily projects along the West Coast. While the firm is headquartered in Vancouver, it does business in Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada.

Not including purchased properties, the company has built 65 individual developments comprising more than 15,000 units and more than $2.5 billion in construction costs.

The seller of the properties was the Chicago-based real estate investment trust Equity Residential. The publicly-traded company in mid April unloaded two other Oregon assets, the 373-unit Tanasbourne Terrace and the 352-unit Club at Tanasbourne, both located in Hillsboro. Those apartments sold to the Swedish pension fund adviser Alecta Real Estate USA LLC for $69.4 million.

According to Phil Oester, one of the brokers involved in the Beaverton deals, Equity Residential is in the process of leaving the Portland market in order to focus on newer products in the core markets of areas like Washington, D.C., Seattle and Los Angeles.

The company still owns Center Pointe Apartments and LaSalle Apartments, both of which are located on Southwest Millikan Way in Beaverton. Both are for sale.

The two Beaverton transactions were negotiated on behalf of the seller by Oester and Kenny Dudunakis, both of Hendricks & Partners.

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The Portland area’s regional government Metro today purchased 181 acres of land near Oregon City to be preserved and protected as a natural area.

The $2.2 million investment, which came from funds out of a $227.4 million natural areas bond passed by voters in 2006, will protect land at Canemah Bluff, an area formed by ancient lava flows and carved by the force of the Missoula floods. Metro now owns 271 acres around the bluff.

According to Metro President Tom Hughes, Metro’s Natural Areas Program looks to identify and acquire key areas that have critical habitat, ample open space and potential restoration possibilities. This land fits that bill, he said.

The new purchase involves two sections of land, one on the northern portion of Canemah Bluff in between pieces of land bought earlier by Metro, as well as portion of land to the south of the bluff. Since the bond passed in 2006, over 2,400 acres of land has been purchased for protection. Each of the purchases have been in the 27 areas around the region that the Metro Council has targeted as key natural areas.

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The Pearl District‘s Dynagraphics building, which was used by the company for large-format printing, is being converted to a mixed-use building with a restaurant, a brewery and office space.

The 57,200-square-foot building, located at 300 N.W. 14^th Ave., was purchased on Thursday by 300 N.W. 14^th Ave. LLC, a limited liability company owned by a group of business owners and led by Jeff Arthur, owner of Pearl MedSpa. The LLC bought the building for $3.3 million, $450,000 less than the listed asking price, according to broker John Bowman, who represented the seller.

The property is zoned Exd, which allows industrial, retail, office and residential use, so the purchasers won’t have to go through a zoning change. Proposed tenants include a restaurant, a brewery and a large office user, Bowman said.

Both Mark Edlen, principal of Gerding Edlen Development Company, and Jordan Schnitzer, president of Harsch Investment Properties, had their eyes on the building, Bowman said. But neither pulled the trigger considering the building is a contributing structure to the 13^th Avenue Historic District, and would require a lengthy process to find out what about the building could be changed, he said.

The building was constructed in 1945 and was originally known as the General Electric Supply Corp. Building.

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