Investors Buy Out Part of Boise Cascade

Boise Cascade on Tuesday sold its San Diego operations for about $27 million to a group of investors led by Boise’s San Diego regional manager, Alan Quinby III.

The company’s San Diego ventures include a lumber yard and mill, a wholesale distribution facility and seven retail building-materials outlets, which will be renamed Westy’s, the name used by Boise Cascade for its retail operations until the mid-1970s.

The new partnership, called Western Lumber Co., includes Quinby, who will become the firm’s president, and investment bankers George McCown and David DeLeeuw, who are partners in their own investment firm. That company specializes in the management acquisition of divisions and subsidiaries of public companies, such as Boise Cascade.

McCown, who will be the new firm’s chairman, is a former Boise Cascade senior vice president in charge of building materials.

The sale by Boise Cascade is a leveraged buyout, meaning that some of the purchase price will be paid from the future profits of the acquired company. Lead lender for the acquisition is GlenFed Capital, a subsidiary of Glendale Federal Savings & Loan, according to McCown.

The transfer of several Boise properties owned by the Port of San Diego, including the company’s area headquarters building in National City and a retail outlet on North Harbor Drive near Shelter Island, was approved by port officials Tuesday afternoon.

The new company valued the transaction at about $27 million. Moreover, according to port records, the partnership paid Boise $861,126 for leaseholds and improvements, excluding equipment and inventory, for the land owned by the port. Under terms of Boise’s lease, the port must approve any sale or transfer of the lease.

Sales Totaled $125 Million

Boise Cascade’s sale of its San Diego County outlets is part of the Idaho-based company’s efforts over the last 18 months to sell several of its building-materials operations, primarily in the Southwest and the south-central region of the country.

The company is shifting its efforts in the building-materials business to the Northwest, where it has “the most integrative value to our wood-products manufacturing facilities,” officials have said.

The local Boise outlets had sales last year of about $125 million, according to a source familiar with the buyout.