Photo Jun 24, 12 07 47 PM.jpg
The Oregon Historical Society has sold the Sovereign Hotel building to a private investment group.
(Elliot Njus/The Oregonian)
The Oregon Historical Society has sold the 1923 former hotel it bought more than three decades ago to house its offices and expand its Oregon History Center.
The society spent two years looking for a buyer for the Sovereign Hotel, once Portland's tallest building and considered its first skyscraper. It's also notable for the 14,000-square-foot mural, which gives the illusion of a three-dimensional sculpture, painted by Richard Haas in 1989 on four of the building's six sides.
It eventually decided to sell to the Randall family — whose $10 million grant jump-started the Randall Children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel — which paid an undisclosed amount for the building. (Public records don't yet reflect the sale.)
"The board — I think correctly — decided running an apartment building is not the mission of the Oregon Historical Society," said Executive Director Kerry Tymchuk. "Our mission is Oregon History, and running apartment building even with a property manager still took a great deal of our time."
The Randall family will add the building's four floors of office space and 44 apartments to its existing real estate portfolio. Robert D. and Marcia H. Randall started their real estate company in 1960, according to the website for their charitable trust.
The deal was complicated by the fact that the building is interconnected with the rest of the historical society properties on the same block and because they share utilities and mechanical systems, said Robert Black, a senior vice president with brokerage NAI Norris, Beggs & Simpson.
And it was hurried by the need for an expensive renovation, including extensive work on the building's facade. That could mean damage to the 14,000-square-foot mural.
But the sale agreement requires that the building be preserved and the mural remain. The historical society and the Randall family will share the cost of restoring the mural.
The historical society also has a 10-year lease to stay in the building as a tenant.
-- Elliot Njus