GREENWICH VILLAGE — A seven-story loft building on University Place is for sale for the first time in 80 years.
The building at 84 University Place has been owned by the French furniture store that occupied it, Charles Cheriff Galleries, for the past eight decades, and is for sale because the furniture shop is moving to a new location, according to Eastern Consolidated, the real estate firm marketing the property.
The approximately 15,000-square-foot space is on the market for $24.985 million and is already "generating interest from investors interested in renovating and repositioning it as an office building with ground floor retail because there is a lack of office space downtown," according to Eastern Consolidated broker Adelaide Polsinelli.
Polsinelli, a principal and the senior managing director at the firm, noted that co-working giant WeWork is taking over "an entire 94,000-square-foot, 10-story building at 88 University Place," which she sees as an indication of an "insatiable demand for office space in the immediate area."
“The Midtown South/Greenwich Village office submarket continues to be one of the most desirable submarkets in Manhattan," Polsinello said. "Rental rates are averaging over $80 per square foot and vacancy rates remain below 3 percent."
The property at 84 University Place, just below Union Square, has 24 feet of frontage on the west side of University, between East 11th and 12th Streets, and ground floor ceiling heights of more than 13 feet.
Ceilings on the upper floors are more than 10 feet high, and the basement has a ceiling of more than eight feet in height.
The building is equipped with a 1,500-pound capacity elevator that goes to all floors, including the lower level, and is equipped with fire sprinklers throughout.
University Place has managed to maintain a fairly diverse array of ground-floor retail, with chains like CVS and Chase Bank offset by neighborhood eateries like Grey Dog and independent pharmacies and clothing shops.
The controversial 23-story residential development replacing Bowlmor Lanes is just one block up, with condo prices ranging from $2.4 million to $16 million, and a smaller boutique luxury condo building is just next door.
The property lies in one of the only un-landmarked swaths of Greenwich Village, though the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has been waging a yearslong campaign to get the city to rezone University Place to prevent more developments like the one at Bowlmor.
Despite a recent win on a separate campaign for landmarking further downtown, the city has not expressed an interest in doing anything on University Place.
