Star-Bulletin file photo
The Skyline Tower in Bellevue, Wash., above, which has
been sold along with the nearby 400 Building, was purchased
in 1988 for $50 million as one of the estate's biggest purchases
under a mainland property acquisition program.

Campbell Estate
sells 2 buildings

The Bellevue, Wash., structures
are sold for $88.975 million

Star-Bulletin staff

The Estate of James Campbell has sold two downtown Bellevue, Wash., buildings for $88.975 million to Unico Properties, a Seattle-based real estate services company.

The Skyline Tower and the 400 Building have a total of 460,000 square feet of Class A office space.

The estate purchased the two buildings together from Prudential Real Estate in 1988 for $63 million, one of its biggest purchases under a mainland acquisition program that began in the 1970s. The estate later invested some money to improve the buildings, according to Chief Executive David McCoy.

The Honolulu-based estate sold the buildings under a Section 1031 exchange, which is an IRS rule allowing properties exchanges that defer capital gains.

The IRS allows this because the real estate investment remains intact with new properties purchased to replace the properties sold.

"We are fine tuning our portfolio and replacing these (Bellevue) properties with other assets," McCoy said.

He said the timing was right to sell the Bellevue office buildings and that the estate is looking for other mainland real estate purchases.

"We haven't tied down any of those yet and are looking at a bunch of possibilities," McCoy said, adding that those include buildings in Texas and on the East Coast.

McCoy said the Campbell Estate still owns warehouses in Kent Valley, south of Seattle, and two small shopping centers in Lynnwood and Northgate, north of Seattle.

Bellevue, just east of Seattle, is in the midst of a hot real estate market with a Class A office vacancy rate less than 1 percent. Several new office buildings are under construction.

In the past 14 months, Unico has purchased seven properties throughout the Puget Sound region, totaling 1.5 million square feet of office space with a total value of more than $200 million.

Dale Sperling, executive vice president of Unico Properties, said they wanted to expand in Bellevue because of its low vacancy rate.

Skyline Tower, built in 1983 by Prudential Real Estate, is a 24-story office building with 390,000 square feet of office and mixed use space.

The 400 building, built in 1968, is located on the same block and includes 70,000 square feet of mixed-use space.

Campbell Estate, among Hawaii's largest landowners, was founded in 1900 by Scottish seaman James Campbell.