ACCOMAC — BaySys Technologies is selling its headquarters on U. S. Route 13 — the widely discussed former home of the Eastern Shore News.
The building is listed for sale by Coldwell-Banker Harbour Realty for $1.5 million.
“The decision to sell headquarters is a part of a facilities plan designed to allow us to transition overall operations into a single location,” BaySys founder and president Steve Walton said.
A company spokesman said the decision was made to sell the ornate three-story, 14,500-square-foot Georgian-style building and to instead house employees in existing office space in the Interad Ltd. building at the Accomack Airport Industrial Park in Melfa, which the company owns.
Employees also will be working in a new facility BaySys plans to build within the next year and a half at the Wallops Research Park. BaySys also currently leases a large hangar at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility.
BaySys employees were told of the plan to sell the building two weeks ago, the spokesman said.
The company purchased the building at 24233 Lankford Highway in 2007 from developer Eileen Kirkwood. BaySys founder and president Steve Walton said then it was purchased to serve as the company’s world headquarters and also to provide offices for BaySys’ engineers.
His plans for the property included eventually adding two wings that were part of the original owner’s design for expansion as needed.
The imposing structure is known to some locals as the “White House” — named for a coat of whitewash since removed — and also is called the George McMath building, named after the local entrepreneur and former state delegate who built it two decades ago.
The building always has been one of the Eastern Shore’s most visible and most talked-about structures and its history includes some unusual chapters.
Kirkwood bought it at auction in 2004 for $763,000 after the building the previous year was raided by dozens of armed federal officials executing search warrants. The auction resulted from a foreclosure procedure after the owner at the time, who relatives said planned to open a substance abuse center there, stopped making payments.
The building also before that housed the offices of McMath’s company, Atlantic Publications, whose holdings included the Eastern Shore News.