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WOODS HOLE — During the summer season, about 800 people per week wander into Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Water Street information office to ask a question, take a tour or pick up a village map.

Those tourists will be wandering somewhere else after the right real estate buyer comes along.

what’s for sale

$1.59 million for two-story, 2,016-square-foot WHOI

property with views

of Eel Pond in Woods Hole.

WHOI has put the 93 Water St. property, housing the information office, up for sale. Listed for $1.59 million, the two-story building in the heart of downtown Woods Hole measures 2,016 square feet, has water views of Eel Pond, space for seven offices and two half-baths, according to its listing with real estate firm LandVest Inc. The property’s zoning allows it to be used for commercial or residential purposes.

The building serves as a de facto information office for not only WHOI but for the village, and the location has served that purpose well, said Larry Madin, executive vice president and director of research at WHOI. But as the institution cast a critical eye at its real estate portfolio, the building became a prime candidate for sale.

“We did an analysis of some of the properties we owned around the village area to see whether there were things that either were not necessary for what we do or things we could find a replacement location for,” he said. “It’s a valuable location, and we could get a fair amount of money for it.”

WHOI is also listing a multifamily home on Millfield Street for $1.995 million and a single-family home on Woods Hole Road for $370,000. A recent sale of a home on Little Harbor Road to the Climate Foundation of Beaverton, Ore., brought in $815,000, according to records at the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds.

Madin said the proceeds from the sales will help pay for repairs and upkeep at other WHOI facilities.

When 93 Water St. sells, WHOI will need to relocate its information office, which also houses the media relations team. The institution has other properties on or near Water Street, including the Bigelow and Smith laboratories and 38 Water St., housing Coffee Obsession on the first floor and WHOI staff upstairs.

But the question remains: What will move to make room for WHOI’s welcome mat? “I think it’s really clear we do want to have a presence where people can easily find … information about what we do here at the institution,” Madin said. “We’re looking, in the event that we do move out of that building, to establish a comparable location.”

Donald Estes, co-owner of the Landfall Restaurant in Woods Hole, said he hopes WHOI will follow through on that pledge.

“I would hope that they would build or make a bigger or better one,” he said. “I think all the institutions here should be open to the public. They shouldn’t be behind closed doors.”

A neighboring research facility, the Marine Biological Laboratory, last year announced plans to sell its Stoney Beach property in Woods Hole to raise cash; that effort was called off in light of MBL’s new affiliation with the University of Chicago, which took effect this month and brought financial stability to the research facility.

According to WHOI’s tax return for 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, it received $231 million in revenue against $226 million in expenses. In the same year, the value of its assets dropped by about $74 million. But Madin said WHOI’s sales are not in the same vein as MBL’s abandoned effort.

“It’s not a case of being in a financial emergency, but a fairly sober assessment that the money we’re spending on these properties represents investments we could be making on lab buildings and so forth, things that are more central to our mission,” Madin said. “We were being landlords to residential properties; that’s not really our business.”