Two years after announcing it will move operations out to Amherst, Unyts has a deal to sell its downtown facility.
Unyts CEO Mark Simon confirmed the 51,500-square-foot building at 110 Broadway is under contract to be sold to Ellicott Development Co., with a closing date yet to be finalized. Terms for the deal were not disclosed, but the building was listed for $3.4 million with Pyramid Brokerage.
“We had a lot of people who came through the building, but it wasn’t the right fit,” he said. “We’re thrilled we’ll be getting to the finish line at some point in the future.”
William Paladino, CEO at Ellicott, is hopeful the deal will close in 60 to 90 days, but declined to discuss specific plans for the space.
“We’re working on some different things for some tenants who want some bigger space, so were pursuing those tenancies,” he said.
The sale comes as Unyts is preparing to move later this summer to a five-acre site on Bryant & Stratton Way in Williamsville. Unyts purchased the site from Autism Services Inc. for $1.6 million. Included was a 45,000-square-foot building with 200 parking spaces, enough room for both Unyts’ 200 employees and its fleet of blood drive vehicles.
The nonprofit agency had been looking for space to expand for at least six years, and had considered buying or leasing space at the former Sheehan Hospital, now owned and operated by McGuire Group as the Compass East building.
The move to the new space was not contingent on the sale, Simon said, but took longer than expected. Initial plans called for moving to the space last summer. It was completely gutted and retrofitted from its former use as a school to include clinical tissue recovery space and appropriate chilled storage and walk-in coolers for tissue, organs and blood.
“It took a lot of time and planning, making sure that we were very cost conscious, and took us longer because the plans changed a lot in the development phase,” Simon said. “We have a great building now that will be able to meet our needs and allow us to serve the community.”
With revenue of $29 million, Unyts is the region’s provider of transplant services for eye, tissue and organs and it also operates a community blood bank program. The agency also has a 9,000-square-foot leased space on Cartright Drive in Amherst where it keeps its fleet of trucks and blood mobiles. A second phase of the move to Bryant & Stratton Way will include building a garage to house that fleet.
