Pacific Office Properties Trust Inc., the Los Angeles-based company formed by Jay Shidler, said it intends to sell as much as $350 million in stock to raise money with a plan to possibly buy more properties here and on the Mainland.

The company yesterday filed for the stock sale to certain investors, saying it believes it is well-situated to raise the money and purchase office buildings from distressed property owners and others during the next two years.

The effort stands out as a bold move at a time when most companies are hunkering down because of a recession. Bloomberg News reported this week that not one company raised money through an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in January.

But as a real estate investment trust, Pacific Office Properties wants to raise cash to take advantage of what it believes will be a decline in office building prices over the next two years. It forecasts some property owners will have to sell because they won't be able to refinance in coming years.

"This will give us the opportunities to acquire those properties in the markets we're really focused on," said Shidler, who is chairman of Pacific Office.

"The intent to sell these securities and be able to make investments that we believe will be at yields the likes of which we haven't seen since the RTC days," he said.

The RTC is the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was an entity created by the federal government to sell off assets of troubled bankrupt savings and loan associations in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Pacific Office filed documents at the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying it plans to pursue a strategy of buying building at discounts to replacement costs and then increasing leasing.

Pacific Office was formed last year as Shidler merged his Hawai'i and Western U.S. properties with a small publicly traded company. The REIT owns 40 Class A office buildings in Honolulu, Southern California and Phoenix, with a total of 4.3 million square feet of space.

In Hawai'i the company either owns outright or jointly owns seven buildings, including Waterfront Plaza, the Davies Pacific Center, the Pan Am Building and the Bank of Hawaii Waikiki Center. The portfolio consists of about 1.6 million square feet of space.

Shidler said the company intends to use the proceeds from the offering to buy about $600 million worth of properties in its target markets.

Pacific Office anticipates the offering will be attractive to investors because of Shidler's track record of never missing a dividend payment with the three publicly traded REITs he's been affiliated with previously. The new shares will pay at least a 70 cent annual dividend broken into monthly payments, resulting in an annual return of at least 7.23 percent.

Shidler also is one of Hawai'i's most successful real estate investors and has either donated or pledged $30 million to the University of Hawai'i's business school since 2006. In light of the contributions, the school was renamed the Shidler College of Business.

The stock sale will be done through a dealer-manager that's yet to be selected. The stock being sold will not trade on public markets, though after seven years can be converted into Pacific Office's regular common stock.

Because of the long-term nature of the investment, the company anticipates people having to meet certain income and asset requirements to make the purchases, which will be for a minimum of $5,000. To be eligible to buy, investors must make $70,000 a year in gross income and have at least $70,000 in assets excluding their home, furnishings and automobiles.

Alternatively investors may qualify for the purchase with a minimum net worth of $250,000.