The 92-acre tech campus on South Hill has had numerous flings with some of the best-known names in the semiconductor business, but has yet to settle down to a long-term commitment.

But life is changing for what its original owner called the Puyallup Science Park. The campus’s new owner says it has a plan that could finally make the campus an asset to the community again.

Four owners have tried without much long-term success to make the campus, originally built by Fairchild Semiconductor in the early ’80s, into a significant job generator for the South Sound.

Fairchild Semiconductor succeeded briefly, employing as many as 900 workers in 1985, but the plant has been shut down for nearly a decade.

The most recent former owner, Microchip Technology Inc., promised to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the plant after it bought it in 2000, but never reopened the facility.

The plant’s inability to attract a faithful owner has frustrated Puyallup’s city leaders and has led them to wonder whether the campus will ever produce and nurture the kind of clean and stable industry that they have been seeking for more than two decades.

“The campus has been a kind of white elephant for many of these years,” said Puyallup Mayor Mike Deal.

But the city got new hope last Monday. A Seattle company bought the property, bringing the promise of a new formula to put the sophisticated, expensive cluster of buildings and its parklike surrounding acreage into productive use once again. That plan contemplates dividing the plant into several stand-alone buildings and selling or leasing them to separate high-tech companies.

That new owner, the well-known real estate firm Benaroya Cos., bought the campus with its seven buildings and 710,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space for $30 million, a big discount from Microchip Technology’s asking price of some $93 million. The company had bought the complex from Matsushita of Japan in 2000 for $80 million.

HISTORY OF SUCCESS

Benaroya, founded in 1956, developed many office parks, retail centers and warehouses in the Seattle area during its first 28 years of existence before getting out of the real estate business in 1984.

The company then changed its focus to philanthropy and venture capital. The home of the Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, bears the family’s name. So, too, does a research center at Virginia Mason Hospital.

The company re-entered the real estate market in 1994 because the “market was right and the demand was there,” said Larry Benaroya, the company’s principal. The company now specializes in tech-related developments. It’s already creating two business parks in Pierce County, one in Fife and the other in Sumner.

Benaroya said the company’s new plans call for dividing the plant into several logical pieces and selling those facilities to several high-technology companies.

The company has hired an Oregon firm, Evergreen Engineering, to study the former semi-conductor plant and to recommend alterations that will create independent properties out of the one big plant.

The company might even sell 21 acres of the heavily wooded land surrounding the office-like manufacturing complex to a residential developer as the site for new homes or condominiums.

Benaroya’s interest in the complex began nearly a year ago, said Ellie Chambers, Puyallup’s economic development director.

The city worked with Microchip’s real estate director to partition the property into four sections for zoning purposes.

The property is now governed by a single development agreement with the city that prescribes its potential uses.

By dividing the property into four parcels, said Chambers, the city has the flexibility to treat each area differently to allow uses not contemplated when Fairchild first approached the city in 1981 to build a semiconductor park on the tract that the company called Puyallup Science Park.

Benaroya has had considerable success in buying and re-marketing vacant high-technology facilities.

In Meridian, Idaho, near Boise, Benaroya bought the former Jabil Electronics chip plant. It sold that plant to the Meridian School District to serve as its administrative headquarters.

In Hillsboro, Ore., near Portland, Benaroya acquired a former Komatsu chip facility. Benaroya’s game plan there is the same one it plans to implement in Puyallup: Divide the plant into several digestible pieces and re-market it to tech companies that need new facilities but don’t want a huge new plant.

RECRUITING TENANTS

Benaroya plans to move quickly to turn the Puyallup campus. The costs of having $30 million standing idle is considerable, he said, and just keeping the plant maintained in a steady state is expensive.

The plant came with five full-time employees who maintain and clean the building and its machinery. Benaroya hired a guard service to protect the property.

The real estate company executive said if all goes well, new tenants could move in as soon as next spring or early summer.

Benaroya said the company expects to pressure wash and paint the building exteriors and to clean up neglected landscaping to make the buildings more saleable. The owner might have to create new lobbies and elevators for the buildings that don’t have them now and sever some connecting passageways that link the buildings.

The complex has an expensive infrastructure that its previous owners spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create.

For instance, there are more than 100,000 square feet of “clean room” space in three buildings for the manufacture of delicate computer components.

And the campus is served by a special water connection from Tacoma Water’s mountain watershed to furnish the manufacturing facilities with pure water for manufacturing. Puget Sound Energy has heavy-duty power lines routed to the campus.

Benaroya said high on the list of prospects are companies that need the specialized clean rooms and businesses that are looking for data center space.

“This will put a new piece of property into the mix, provide close-to-home jobs for some people and increase Puyallup’s tax base,” said Chambers.

Puyallup City Councilwoman Kathy Turner said she’s excited at the prospects of the site, where production shut down in 1998, being revived.

“It would be nice to see the creation of more family-wage jobs in the area,” she said.

Puyallup Mayor Deal, who has seen the campus pass through the hands of five previous owners, said he believes the campus could finally fulfill its potential.

“It would be encouraging to see it finally provide steady, decent-paying jobs for the people in this area,” Deal said. “Benaroya’s a heavy hitter. If anyone has the connections to make this happen, they do.”

John Gillie: 253-597-8663

john.gillie@thenewstribune.com

Puyallup Science Park history

1981: Fairchild Semiconductor wins city approval to build on the site. It projects some 3,000 employees will work at the plant by 1990.

1983: Fairchild plant opens. Fairchild, the first producer of a commercially viable semiconductor, is owned by Schlumber Ltd., a French oil field supply company.

1985: Employment peaks at some 900 workers.

1987: Fairchild is sold to National Semiconductor; 150 workers laid off.

1991: National sells to Matsushita Semiconductor. Both National and Fairchild say the plant was never profitable.

1995: Matsushita announces a $600 million expansion. Three hundred more jobs will be created, it claims.

1996: Construction work is delayed.

1998: Matsushita indefinitely delays the plant expansion. A month later, it shutters the plant and lays off 340 workers.

1999: Matsushita auctions off some of the plant’s machinery.

2000: Microchip Technology buys the Puyallup plant. “We are here to stay,” said the Microchip CEO. He predicts 1,000 jobs by the decade’s end.

2002: Microchip buys a shut-down Oregon chip plant and reopens it instead of the Puyallup plant.

2003: Microchip puts up a “For Sale” sign. Price: $93 million.

2007: Benaroya Companies buys the plant for $30 million.