The former Empire Ford dealership property downtown is among nine Spokane-area properties slated to be offered for sale next month, all through an eBay-style online timed auction format.

Also among the nine are the top two floors of the 13-story Ridpath Hotel tower downtown and the adjacent four-story Y Building, which failed to attract buyers when offered for sale last month through a sealed-bid auction.

The former Empire Ford property, which includes a nearly 50,000-square-foot showroom and service shop building and a multistory parking structure, has stirred a lot of interest from potential bidders, including for possible hospitality and medical office building use, says Christopher Bell, of NAI Black, of Spokane. The online sale for all of the properties here will run from July 15 to July 30.

The other properties to be offered, all on the West Plains, include:

•The 25-acre Pillar Rock commercial development site, located on the north side of U.S. 2, east of Flint Road in Airway Heights, across the highway from a Bank of Whitman branch. A Web site for the development site lists the "investor's price" for the entire property at $9.75 million.

• The 51-acre RockRock and adjoining 39-acre RussellRock properties, located on the north side of U.S. 2, east of Airway Heights, and east of Russell Road. The undeveloped, partially wooded properties include some wetlands and are zoned for light industrial and rural traditional use.

•A 14.4-acre, light industrial-zoned site at 6901 W. Thorpe Road, located on the south side of Interstate 90, on the south side of Thorpe, mostly between Russell Road and Ben Franklin Lane.

•The 5.7-acre AirportRock light-industrial development site, located just southeast of the big Triumph Composite Systems Inc. plant, on the south side of Flight Drive. The site includes five lots, each slightly over an acre in size, surrounding a planned cul-de-sac.

•Twenty-seven duplex lots in Airway Heights' Russell Heights development, located west of Garfield Road and south of the Airway Heights Corrections Center.

NAI Black is advertising the properties through an accelerated marketing program, called Commercial Property PowerSale, that its worldwide affiliate network, NAI Global, began offering recently. The program is designed to help property owners and financial institutions dispose of troubled and surplus real estate assets quickly.