Moda Health sold its office building on Bond Street in Bend to an undisclosed buyer.(Dean Guernsey/Bulletin photo)

Moda Health Plan Inc. sold its office building near the Old Mill District in Bend to an anonymous buyer last month for $25.5 million.

A few weeks after the May 3 closing in Bend, Moda sold a second office building, this one in La Grande, to Grande Ronde Hospital for $7 million, according to a Union County deed.

The Portland-based health plan company, which is privately held, isn’t saying how it will use the proceeds.

“Throughout our history, we have bought and sold real estate in connection with our business,” Vice President Jonathan Nicholas said in an email. “These transactions are just part of the regular flow of business opportunities.”

In 2005, Moda sold the 24-story Moda Tower in downtown Portland and in 2016 the Moda Plaza in Milwaukie, but the company retained long-term leases in both buildings, Nicholas said. The company plans to do the same in Bend and La Grande.

Moda completed the five-story, 88,229 square-foot building at 360 SW Bond St. in 2008, and Nicholas said the company has 105 employees working there.

Moda Health retreated from the individual health plan market in Central Oregon this year, following financial trouble in 2016. That year, Moda was placed under supervision of the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services because of its shaky financial condition and ordered to raise $179 million.

Moda will be returning to the Central Oregon market in 2018.

Moda has long-term leases on almost all of the Bend office space, although some of it is sub-leased to other tenants, Nicholas said.

Other tenants in the building include the law firms Karnopp Petersen LLP, Schwabe, Williamson & 
Wyatt PC and Jordan Ramis PC; Western Title & Escrow and the financial planner D.A. Davidson & Co. The Central Oregon office of Portland-based R&H Construction, the general contractor that built the office building, is also there.

The building is fully leased to “premier” tenants, and that’s one reason it was attractive to the buyer, said Paula Van Vleck, a real estate broker with Coldwell Banker Morris. “It will be a long-term hold,” she said. “It’s what we call an income property.”

The buyer of record is 360 Bond Holding LLC, county records show.

The holding company’s membership is listed as Cascade Exchange Services Inc., a Eugene firm that handles property exchanges for tax purposes.

Van Vleck said the buyer is committed to Central Oregon but wants to remain anonymous.

Few commercial properties in Bend sell for as much as $25.5 million, Van Vleck said.

The sale price breaks down to $289 per square foot. When Moda sold its Portland tower in 2005 for $123 million, the transaction set a record at the time at $308 per square foot, according to the Portland Business Journal.

— Reporter: 541-617-7860, kmclaughlin@bendbulletin.com

Moda will be returning to the Central Oregon market in 2018.