A cohort of prime office properties for sale is setting new expectations for high-end commercial real estate in Portland.

A parcel including two superblocks and an aging office building in the North Pearl District is for sale and is expected to fetch an aggressive price, industry insiders say. The Wells Fargo Center is on the market and could go for more than $200 million. And Wieden + Kennedy‘s Pearl District office building is also for sale, and is expected to earn a healthy premium on the $65 million it sold for five years ago.

Taken together with the sale of the former Oregonian building earlier this year for $95 million, the high-dollar listings will soon test how valuable Portland office property has become.

In some cases, the listings are pricing out local investors who believe the real-estate cycle has reached maturity, and prompting head-scratching among locals who see little value in matching the fast-escalating values placed on Portland properties by major out-of-state firms.

“Either I’m really, really wrong, or they’re really, really wrong, but it’s a new normal,” said Noel Johnson, a principal at Portland developer Cairn Pacific.

Institutional buyers can be more aggressive on their pricing, said Buzz Ellis, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle.

“They will tend to see growth in our market,” he said.

Several office properties for sale are likely to fetch record or near-record prices in coming months.

The remaining portions of the Con-way master plan site represent a unique opportunity for developers. The properties, offered by Eastdil Secured, include two 200-foot-by-400-foot superblocks, two smaller surface parking lots and a retired 129,148-square foot Con-way office building. The total developable area spans 6.7 acres of highly valuable urban infill in the fast-emerging Slabtown area.

The office building is being offered separately from the vacant blocks, and is under contract. The office is viewed as a repositioning opportunity that could yield $500 per square foot when it’s eventually resold.

The blocks are along Northwest 21st and 22nd avenues, and three of the four blocks are bounded by Raleigh Street, which is envisioned as Slabtown’s commercial corridor.

The parcel, now owned by XPO Logistics, is regarded as particularly valuable because it is not subject to Portland’s inclusionary housing requirements. Developers could conceivably complete build-out of the entire 17.49-acre Con-way site without including a single affordable housing unit.

Portland’s Bureau of Development Services issued a zoning confirmation letter to an attorney representing XPO Logistics on June 6. The letter confirms the entire XPO site is subject to zoning according to rules in effect on April 24, 2012, when the site’s master plan application was filed. That’s long before the city’s inclusionary housing regulations went into effect earlier this year, and before a package of mixed-use zoning regulations that were approved last year by Portland’s City Council.

A property that is not subject to inclusionary zoning may be worth three times as much as a comparable property that is subject to the affordable housing requirements, Johnson said.

Eventual buyers of Con-way properties could opt to build office, multifamily or retail space, or spaces featuring a combination of uses.

XPO Logistics is accepting “best and final” offers on the site, and is seeing strong interest.

“It’s just a good signal of a really bullish market right now,” Johnson said.

The area is booming with office development, including the 300,000-square-foot Field Office development from project^, and the rehabilitation of the Leland James building by Cairn Pacific and Capstone Partners.

For the office market, the sale of the Oregonian building at 1320 S.W. Broadway was a new watershed moment. The sale valued the renovated creative-office building at approximately $540 per square foot, a record for Portland office space. The buyer was Credit Suisse, through a Delaware-based limited liability company, Portland 1320 Broadway Real Estate Holding LLC.

The building had been subject to a thorough renovation by the previous owner, Urban Renaissance Group of Seattle, with a design by Allied Works Architecture.

A Credit Suisse spokeswoman declined to comment on the bank’s investment in Portland’s market.

Several factors are pushing office properties to record valuations. Average asking rents rose to $28.04 per square foot during the first quarter, with Class A office space in Portland’s Central Business District fetching $34.94 per square foot, according to Jones Lang LaSalle. Office vacancies were unchanged at 9.4 percent.

Office properties for sale are likely to fetch eyebrow-raising prices. These include Wieden + Kennedy’s Pearl District corporate headquarters at 224 N.W. 13th Ave. The owner, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, has placed the property on the market, and is being represented by San Francisco-based brokers of Eastdil Securities.

The 190,151-square-foot building last sold for $65 million, or $342 per square foot, in 2012. It’s likely to fetch even more this time around.

The 109-year-old building was renovated in 2012 in another Allied Works-designed project.

“It’s really a quite remarkable building,” Johnson said.

Wieden + Kennedy will continue as the main tenant in the building, a spokeswoman for the advertising agency said. (The building is also home of the Bluehour restaurant).

The listing of the Wells Fargo Center looms over the Portland office market. Earlier this month, the bank announced it would sell the full-block, 689,840-square-foot building – Portland’s tallest skyscraper. The listing includes the tower and podium.

The bank leases approximately 40 percent of the building to other tenants. Wells Fargo plans to lease space back from the building’s eventual buyer. The company will also move employees to other locations in the Portland-metro area.

While some locals see Portland office space as increasingly unaffordable, it still represents a value compared to San Francisco or Seattle.

“Those markets have seen similar strong rent growth,” said David Hill, senior managing director at Newmark Knight Frank in Portland.

One sign to watch: when companies begin forsaking Portland’s office market for cheaper properties elsewhere in the West.

“Does Portland get to the point where people are looking at Boise or Salt Lake as a more affordable option?” Hill said. “We haven’t seen any evidence of that yet.”

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