Scottsdale office buildings sold for $60 million

A Phoenix-based development and investment company announced Tuesday that it had purchased eight office buildings at the Pima Center in Scottsdale for $60 million.

MainSpring Capital Group, through its Pima Parkway Venture LLC, bought the buildings totaling 547,000 square feet from an affiliate of Bank of America.

Opus West, previous owner of the property northwest of Via de Ventura and Loop 101, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2009.

MainSpring's new office buildings are 70 percent occupied. Its tenants include First American Title, Mutual of Omaha Bank, Pinnacle Oncology, Scottsdale Insurance and Rural/Metro Corp.

MainSpring has another 376,000 square feet of space at Pima Center that is 90 percent occupied, said Mills Brown, the company principal.

"We want to let the world know we're open for business again," Brown said. "I've sat here and watched deals go elsewhere because there was no real ownership of the Opus property."

Pima Center operates on land leased from members of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Construction started in 2005, and the first buildings opened in late 2006.

The center sits on 209 acres. It includes 1.2 million square feet of space and aims to accommodate up to 4 million square feet.

MainSpring, founded in 1991, has about 1.5 million square feet of holdings in the Valley and other assets throughout the West.

Ross Brown Partners will manage MainSpring's Pima Center property and Lee & Associates will handle leasing.

Jim Fijan of CB Richard Ellis represented Bank of America in the sale to MainSpring.

by Peter Corbett The Arizona Republic Jun. 29, 2011 12:00 AM




Scottsdale office buildings sold for $60 million