High-profile Portland waterfront property with complex history listed for $6.5M
By Christopher Bjorke – Digital Producer/Associate Editor, Portland Business Journal
Jul 26, 2024
A 3-acre site with views of downtown Portland and a complex history is for sale on the Willamette River for $6.5 million.
The Louis Dreyfus Co. grain terminal at 900 N. Thunderbird Way, just north of the east end of the Steel Bridge, is listed by broker Kidder Mathews.
"This property has tremendous future upside potential as a redevelopment for mixeduse/residential with connectivity to The Rose Quarter, adjacency to light rail and with outstanding views of the Portland skyline and Willamette River," according to Kidder Mathews' listing of the property.
"This property offers these amazing views and also sits next to the Moda Center which provides mass transit (light rail), restaurants, hotels and amenities nearby within walking distance."
The listing was tweeted late Thursday by Portland architect and real estate observer Iain MacKenzie.
Among the features highlighted in the property listing are one of the city's few deepwater docks, Opportunity Zone status, proximity to the Albina Vision Trust's planned redevelopment of the historic neighborhood and Portland's largest billboard on the grain silos, which shut down in 2019.
The $6.5 million asking price is more than twice what it last sold for in 2021, when it was acquired by Castle Arden LLC for $2.9 million, according to property records.
Since its purchase, Castle Arden and a related company Castle Tire used the site as storage for a tire scrap recycling and disposal operation. The Oregon Department of Environment issued an enforcement action against the companies in July 2023 for operating a waste tire storage site without a permit, which included as $13,600 penalty. The action's status appears to be pending.
Before Castle Arden's purchase, the property was acquired in 2019 by California-based Rabin Worldwide for $164,000 from Louis Dreyfus, a global agriculture, food processing and shipping company, which had invested $21 million in it less than 10 years earlier.
Kidder Mathews' listing plays up the site's potential as part of the Albina redevelopment, which is set to receive $488 million in federal support.
"The highest and best use of this property is a re-development into a mixed use, livework-play, multi-phase, master planned development along the waterfront," a listing brochure said. "The property has endless potential for redevelopment into a mixed use project with a hotel, residential, retail and/or restaurants located on the Willamette River with access to the waterfront trail, and located next door to the Rose Quarter and Portland’s Light Rail."