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According to regulatory reports and news accounts, Gramercy is curtailing its direct investments in property and shifting its focus to its existing real estate finance business.
A company official declined to comment Tuesday.
The Pritchard Park buildings, both built in the early 1970s, are listed for sale at a total of $6.5 million. The sales listing was made in late December.
Boylan said they are considered Class B office space, meaning finishes and fixtures are serviceable but a notch below Class A space.
“We consider these trophy real estate, right in the heart of downtown, and a great investment opportunity,” he said.
The Wells Fargo building, at 1 Haywood St., contains 92,601 square feet and has 70 workers either serving the greater Asheville area or working in the retail branch on the first floor.
The building’s fourth floor is empty and available — and has been for 15 years, said Tessier. Much of the first floor is also advertised as available for lease.
With its slitlike windows and exterior of concrete panels embedded with white gravel, the Wells Fargo building once resembled a fortress.
Renovations done early last decade, before Wells Fargo acquired then-occupant Wachovia, expanded window space and gave the building a more open feel.
Before that, the upstairs empty space “was just an empty black hole,” Tessier said.
“Somebody’s going to have to go in and spend some money to make it competitive space,” he said.
The Bank of America building, which is fronted by one of the few privately owned green spaces downtown, has 40,769 square feet. In addition to the branch bank on the first floor, the building houses several bank employees upstairs and has space that could be occupied by other tenants. Nastacie would not say how many bank employees work in the building.
Bank of America has listed the 68 Patton branch as a limited service facility with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
As of last June, the branch had $16.2 million in deposits, according to the FDIC. That was the lowest among the bank’s eight Buncombe County branches.
The College Street had the second-lowest deposit total at $26.2 million.
Bank of America was fifth in market share among banks serving the county last June with 8.2 percent of deposits.
Outside Buncombe County, where it has eight branches, it has a much more sparse network of branches in Western North Carolina. It was ninth in the region in market share with 4.9 percent of deposits.
Wells Fargo had the largest share of bank deposits in Buncombe County with 24.4 percent and the second-largest in the region at 16.6 percent.