By JAMES FINK
jfink@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1611

One month after an online auction failed to produce an attractive bid, Olympic Towers in downtown Buffalo was put back on the real estate market.

The Pearl Street landmark has a $3.9 million asking price, approximately $1 million more than the highest online bid for the 10-story, 143,248-square-foot building.

The difference is how the building is being marketed, said Jeff LiPuma, managing director, CB Richard Ellis Buffalo. He is handling the listing after his firm landed it late Wednesday afternoon.

"The perception was this was a foreclosure or distressed sale and it wasn't," LiPuma said. "This is a good property."

Despite a healthy tenant roll, anchored by federal leases from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and U.S. Trustees office, there were few interested buyers. The building has had a series of owners, many of them out-of-town interests that did not understand the Western New York market, sources said.

Most recently, the building was acquired in August 2008 by JPMC 2005-CIBC 12 Olympic Towers LLC. The affiliate of JP Morgan Chase Bank and Chicago's LaSalle Bank paid $8.46 million, buying Olympic Towers from Elman Buffalo Associates LLC. Elman paid $11.2 million when it bought the building in late 1998.

The JPMC sale was part of a complex legal action and eventual foreclosure action led by LaSalle Bank. LaSalle attempted to recoup an $8.3 million loan that JP Morgan Chase Bank originated in 2005.

Constructed a century ago and renovated and expanded in 1987, Olympic Towers sits behind the Hyatt Regency Buffalo and neighbors the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center - a prime downtown location.

LiPuma said JPMC 2005-CIBC 12 Olympic Towers LLC spent the last two years renovating the building.

He will market the building - which actually is two towers connected by a center atrium - regionally and nationally, he added.

"I'm confident I can attract a good class of potential investors," LiPuma said. "These are people who wouldn't have looked at it if there was the perception of a foreclosure attached to the building."