Although the original bidder backed out earlier this month, a new buyer has come forward with a bid to purchase the property and lease it out to tenants.

“The original buyer is out but we do have another accepted offer,” said Ray Jarvis of Homelife Muskoka Real Estate Limited on Monday. “With any deal you never really know until it’s closed. There are still a couple of outstanding conditions, but everything looks good. It should be closing in the neighbourhood of 75 to 90 days.”

The original offer was made by Industrial Realty Group (IRG), said Jarvis. The U.S.-based company was in talks with Dura for the sale of nine of its North American properties, including the Bracebridge plant, at a cost of $19.2 million.

“That major problem was the U.S. real estate market,” said Jarvis. “It’s not that IRG isn’t a wealthy company, but I think they feel they have lots of other options to purchase property. It’s nothing to do with the Bracebridge plant. The majority of the buildings are located in the U.S.”

Jarvis said the Bracebridge plant was in high demand prior to IRG’s offer, and one of those interested parties stepped in when the IRG deal fell through.

“They’re a Canadian company and they plan to lease out the space,” said Jarvis of the prospective owners. “It’s pretty much identical to the situation before, except that it’s a different person. The only difference is that with these new buyers they can give a commitment to tenants to lease out space today. With IRG it hinged on the whole portfolio.”

Jarvis said he has already received between eight and 10 “solid inquires” from tenants, four of which are medium to large size companies.

The inquiries have come from well-established businesses looking to expand or move, said Jarvis, adding roughly half of them are local.

As under the IRG deal, the entire 134,000-square-foot plant can be leased, or sections as small as 5,000 square feet.

Homelife is again handling the leasing, but Jarvis said he isn’t getting too far ahead of himself until the sale is finalized.

“It’s in the due diligence phase right now, and until that’s finished you don’t get too excited,” he said.