The office space at 99 Church Street (Google Maps)
Months after announcing the closure of its Westchester campus, Berkeley College is selling the two buildings it formerly occupied in downtown White Plains.
The for-profit institution has hired commercial brokerage RM Friedland to find buyers for 99 Church Street and 6 Cottage Place, the asking prices for which have not been publicly revealed, according to the Westchester & Fairfield County Business Journals.
The building at 99 Church Street provides four stories of office space, as well as a full basement. The building is partially leased with four tenants taking up just over 24,000 of the building’s 110,000 square feet of space. If the building is demolished, the one-acre site could be redeveloped to include up to 136,000 square feet of new development.
The building at 6 Cottage Place, meanwhile, served as a student dorm. It has 55 units totaling 140 beds.
Berkeley College, which has been operating in Westchester since 1945, decided to shut down its White Plains campus in June and consolidate with its New York City campus, citing the pandemic as playing a major role in the decision. The college has a campus in midtown Manhattan as well as four in New Jersey: Newark, Paramus, Woodbridge and Woodland Park.
The four-story office building could draw interest based on the performance of the office market in Westchester, where leasing activity jumped 58 percent in the second quarter compared to the first, according to CBRE.
Nevertheless, the market is still down from previous years. Just 209,000 square feet leased in the second quarter, a 12 percent drop from the five-year average. Asking rents in the market also stabilized.
[WestFair] — Holden Walter-Warner
