Newport Beach, CA-based KBS Strategic Opportunity REIT is the new owner of Marquette Plaza, a 15-story office building on the northwest side of downtown Minneapolis, MN known as the “building with a smile.”
The building sits on a 2.5-acre parcel at 250 Marquette Ave., and is best known for the curving pattern made by the glass panels on its west-facing side, which fronts on Cancer Survivors Park.
KBS paid $88.4 million in cash to the seller, FRM Associates LLC, which it disclosed in an SEC filing submitted on Thursday. Arthur Petrie is the registered agent behind FRM Associates, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office. Petrie is a well-known developer and owner of Petrie Cos. of Las Vegas, NV.
The deal closed on Thursday.
Marquette Plaza was built in 1970, and until 1997 it served as the office of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. FRM Associates bought it from the Federal Reserve in 1997 for just $500,000, according to records with the city of Minneapolis.
It totals 522,656 square feet, and it was 70 percent leased at the time of the sale, according to the filing. The building’s largest tenants are the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, law firm Foley & Mansfield, and The Scoular Co., a commodities trading and transportation company.
The building is catty-corner to the Minneapolis Central Library and across Nicollet Mall from the site of the Gateway project, an ambitious redevelopment by Minneapolis developer United Properties.
The purchase price is more than twice Marquette Plaza’s assessed value, which stood at $40.08 million for taxes payable in 2018, according to Hennepin County records. KBS paid about $169 per square foot.
KBS also owns the Northland Center office building in Bloomington, MN and RBC Plaza, a 40-story office tower in downtown Minneapolis, which is home to multiple tenants including CoStar Group.
Neither Petrie nor executives from KBS could not be immediately reached for contact.
