An undisclosed buyer has agreed to purchase the former Empire Ford property in downtown Spokane, and the transaction should be completed within 60 to 90 days, barring any obstacles that might arise during a "due diligence" review of the property by the prospective buyer, says listing agent Christopher Bell, of Spokane's NAI Black.

Bell declines to say anything about the buyer until the transaction has been completed, other than to note that it's a different party than the one the company had been negotiating with after the property was put up for sale in July, along with eight other properties here, in an eBay-style online timed auction.

"This was an offer that came out of the blue," he says, although he adds, "It's somebody that I've been talking to for awhile."

The former Empire Ford property, at 423 W. Third, includes a nearly 50,000-square-foot showroom and service shop building and a multistory parking structure. Owners Nate and Roberta Greene shuttered the automotive dealership there in December 2007.

Bell had said before the July auction that potential bidders were looking at it for possible hospitality and medical building use. Also, as the Journal reported in July 2008, specialty foods giant Whole Foods Market Inc. had signed a letter of intent to buy the Empire Ford property before apparently deciding to shelve its plans to enter the Spokane market. An auction flyer described the property as being "perfect for a downtown grocery store or multitenant redevelopment."

The property, which was offered with no reserve—or minimum acceptable—bid, attracted three bids at the online auction, with a top bid of $1.1 million, and Bell said NAI Black since then had been working until recently to negotiate a transaction with the top bidder, whose identity wasn't disclosed.

Also among the nine properties offered at the online auction were the top two floors of the 13-story Ridpath Hotel tower downtown and the adjacent four-story Y Building, but they failed to attract a bidder after also failing to draw bidders when offered for sale in May through a sealed-bid auction. The reserve price on the Ridpath floors was $2.6 million, and the reserve price on the Y Building was $3.1 million.

Poachers Rock LLC and Sun Devil Investments LLC, both of Spokane, own those properties, and a separate company, 515 Washvada Investments LLC, of Spokane, owns the rest of the hotel tower. Mark McLees, of NAI Black, who along with colleague Jon Jeffreys represents Poachers Rock and Sun Devil Investments, says it has become clear that attracting strong interest from prospective buyers is going to require consolidating the ownership of the properties, so the hotel complex can be marketed as a package. With that goal in mind, he says he and Jeffreys currently are working to facilitate a possible purchase of the rest of the hotel by Poachers Rock and Sun Devil Investments, although the willingness of 515 Washvada Investments to sell its portion of the hotel remains unclear.

NAI Black advertised the properties here that were included in the online auction through an accelerated marketing program, called Commercial Property PowerSale, that its worldwide affiliate network, NAI Global, had begun offering recently. The program is designed to help property owners and financial institutions dispose of troubled and surplus real estate assets quickly.