The Overland Park International Trade Center is on the auction block.
Rod Jones, a veteran investment sales broker with Colliers International, said he is marketing the 651,648-square-foot structure at 6800 W. 115th St. for special servicer LNR Partners LLC.
Jones said the trade center and 31-acre site will be sold on auction.com, with bidding starting at $8.5 million on Feb. 10 and ending on Feb. 12.
In 2006, Jones sold the property for a group led by Greg Walton, founder ofWalton Construction Co. LLC. Atlanta-based Rubicon Investments LLC bought the property for $46.5 million and unsuccessfully attempted to flip it for $70 million a year later.
Then, in 2009, the Kansas City Market Center, formerly called the Kansas City Gift Market, moved out of the building, vacating 261,000 square feet. Two years later, Rubicon defaulted on the loan it used to finance the building's purchase.
That vacant 261,000-square-foot space, located on a single floorplate, is unparalleled in the local market and adds to the property's value, Jones said. But with that much vacancy, Jones added, he expects the property to sell for nearly $20 million less than he sold it for eight years ago - or about $27.5 million.
Jones said a UnitedHealth Group Inc. unit, OptumRx, occupies 313,085 square feet of the building, including a 237,000-square-foot call center and 76,000-square-foot prescription fulfillment operation.
UnitedHealth, which has invested $60 million in its trade center space, is expected to renew its lease, which expires in December 2016, Jones said. It also may expand into an adjacent 25,000-square-foot space within the trade center complex.
In addition to the UnitedHealth space and former Kansas City Market Center space, the complex includes a 51,000-square-foot exhibit space that has been generating about $250,000 worth of trade-show revenue a year.
Built in 1986, the trade center property is in the south Johnson County office submarket, one of the strongest in the Midwest, Jones said.