NORTHAMPTON — The historic Roundhouse building, once a storage facility for coal gas and later the home of a famous comics franchise, is up for sale.
The distinctively shaped, round brick building with a conical roof is now on the market for $3.9 million.
Broker John S. Williamson, of Williamson Commercial Properties in Springfield, said in a phone call Sunday that a “For Sale” sign should be going up on the building, located next to Pulaski Park, this week.
He’s working with owner Robert Curran Jr. to sell the property “because the market for real estate is really good right now, particularly for a building of this quality.”
“To me it’s the most unique office building I’ve seen in 30 years in the business,” Williamson added. “It’s kind of like a treehouse without a tree.”
The building, with a street address of 244 Main St., has 15,000 square feet of office space and comes with 22 parking spaces, Williamson said. It is accessible both from the large municipal parking lot just off Old South Street and via a catwalk, next to Pulaski Park, that leads to the building’s upper level.
There’s currently just one tenant in the building — CleanSlate, an addiction treatment business that has clinics in multiple states including Massachusetts, though the Northampton office is not listed on the company’s website (cleanslatecenters.com).
Williamson said CleanSlate occupies all the space in the Roundhouse and has been in the property for seven years. He referred questions about why Robert Curran Jr. is trying to sell the property to the owner, who could not immediately be reached for contact.
He said Curran lives in Miami, but “has a lot of close connections to this area.”
The Roundhouse dates to 1850, when it was built to store gas made from coal. It was renovated in the late 1980s by Curran’s late father, Robert Curran, and in the 1990s became the home of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. The two later opened their Words & Pictures Museum of Fine Sequential Art there before moving to another location on Main Street.
The Roundhouse was also the home of Disney Magazine for many years, Williamson said.
“It’s been an important part of Northampton’s artistic and business community for many years now,” he said.