The school will occupy 22,000 square feet of space on the second floor of the two-story building at 110 Broadway – effectively taking up half of the facility between Elm and Oak streets for its 13 classrooms, two medical labs and office space.

The college is moving from 34,000 square feet in the Lafayette Court Building at 465 Main St., where it's centrally located in the downtown core and along the Metro Rail line, but spread on two floors and without significant parking. It's been there since 1998.

In the process, it's trading Ciminelli Real Estate Corp. for Ellicott Development Co. as its landlord. Work on the new space is nearly finished, with occupancy later this month or early next month, although Ellicott CEO William Paladino noted that the school does not know when they will have students in the building because of Covid.

"We are excited about having them as a future long-term tenancy," Paladino said.

Jeffrey Tredo, director of Bryant & Stratton's three Western New York campuses, said the school's classes are currently remote, but he expects many students to begin returning in January, aside from what needs to stay online to maintain social distancing.

Bryant & Stratton offers an array of business, health care and technology programs, and has additional campuses in Amherst and Orchard Park, as well as two campuses each in the Albany, Rochester and Syracuse areas. It also has four locations in Ohio, three campuses in Virginia and three in Wisconsin.

It has 400 students and about 100 staff in downtown Buffalo, and its current campus also includes computer labs, a full-service library and a skills assistance center.

Tredo said the school usually conducts a routine real estate search every 10 to 15 years, and also looks at where its students are coming from and where they are working, since it's a commuter school. In this case, "we were also looking for an opportunity to relocate the campus to a facility where we could be located on a single floor," he said.

That's not easy in downtown Buffalo, given the size of the school's footprint, Tredo noted, but the Broadway building fit the bill, with "nice, new updated space." He acknowledged that it's sacrificing about one-third of its current square footage, but most of that comes from giving up separate walled offices in favor of cubicles and shared space, and from gaining better flow and efficiency.

The academic and student space is not shrinking, he said, and the college will also have a student lounge and a reception area for meetings and study.

The school also is doubling its medical lab space and adding an e-sports lab, with gaming chairs and consoles, for a collegiate-level athletic team launched this fall that competes in video games like Overwatch, Rocket League and Madden.

"It is the fastest-growing collegiate sport in the country," Tredo said. "It has been growing here in higher ed across the country the last three to four years. It’s really a nice collegiate athletic alternative. You don’t have to even be in shape."

Meanwhile, Paladino said Ellicott continues to seek out one or more tenants for the first floor of the 51,552-square-foot building, which Ellicott acquired in 2019 from the former UNYTS for $3 million. The Class-B office building, which was built in 1984, includes 200 covered and 130 surface parking spaces.

UNYTS – now called ConnectLife – sold the one-acre property and also gave up a lease in Amherst to move to the former Autism Services facility on 4.7 acres in Clarence – at 4444 Bryant and Stratton Way.