Bell Avenue Business Center sold Jan. 15 to a family-owned real estate development and management company.

That might not be big news to some, but it marks another turning point in a property that was built in the early 1950s by San Diego-based Solar Aircraft Co. at the behest of John D. Adams, the motivating secretary of the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce who left his fingerprints “on nearly everything of significance that happened here during the Great Depression, World War II and postwar era,” Business Record columnist Dave Elbert wrote. Read the column.

Solar came to town a few decades earlier after Adams convinced the company that it could build aircraft parts in an old Ford auto plant on Grand Avenue, a site that is the current location of the Des Moines Independent Community School District’s Central Campus.

On Bell, Solar built a 658,855-square-foot office and factory on nearly 48 acres of land east of Fleur Drive. Ag manufacturer Massey-Ferguson Inc. bought the property in 1965 and proceeded to build farm implements, lawn and garden tractors and articulated four-wheel drive tractors before closing in 1981.

CDS Global corporate headquarters have been located at 1901 Bell for several years while the property has been owned by the Rubenstein family of Little Falls, N.J.

Since Jan. 15, another New Jersey family, the Silvermans, have owned the property, paying $12 million.

The deed for another high-profile building was filed today.

The Younkers building at Merle Hay Mall has fallen under the ownership of a liquidator for a cool $2.2 million. Just a few years ago, Younkers parent company, Bon Ton Stores Inc., offered to sell the building to mall owners for around $9 million.

Bon Ton is in bankruptcy court these days and all of its stores were part of a $775 million asset purchase in April by a joint venture group that included Tiger Capital Group, which counts large-scale liquidations among its specialties. In what appeared to be an internal transfer, an entity called BTD Merle Hay Mall LLC now holds the deed.