Officials are looking to sell the Medical Faculty Associates building on 2300 M Street, NW, they announced in a release Thursday.

In a process they called a “sale-leaseback,” officials will sell the building to an outside buyer and sign a long-term lease to retain 100 percent of the workspace with no impact to “high-quality level and delivery of services” at the MFA, the release states. Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes said in the release that the sale-leaseback will help support GW’s medical enterprise and academic priorities.

Fernandes said investor interest for “well-located medical office buildings” is “strong.”

The commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield will market the building, according to the release. 

“The MFA determined it will be better prepared for future growth and expansion if it no longer owns the building,” the release states.

The sale comes about a month after officials announced plans for the MFA to break even in fiscal year 2023 as the organization’s recorded debt tops at least $200 million. Barbara Bass, the CEO of the MFA and the dean of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, said at a Faculty Senate meeting in October that the sale of the University’s 20 percent minority stake in the GW Hospital will create a “modern funds flow arrangement” that will redirect revenue to the MFA and increase its profits, but did not explain how it would do so.

“There was no forward position for the MFA as a clinical enterprise without a reset of the relationship with Universal Health Services,” Bass said at the meeting last month.