Difficulty in finding a solid tenant for the second floor has caused the current owners of the old Missoula Mercantile building to place it back on the real estate market.

The building's owners, Octagon Partners from Charlottesville, Virginia, have engaged Jed Dennison of Zillastate Real Estate in Missoula to represent them in the sale of the building. On Saturday, November 2, Dennison explained the reasoning behind placing the historic building back on the market.

"Retail is really not the issue on the street level," Dennison said. "It is on the second floor where we have professional office space available, and some of the folks we've been dealing with wanted to know if the building was for sale, so we put a price on it of $4.5 million dollars. The project needs some one to take 10,000 to 15,000 square feet on the second floor for our financing to kick in and for us to begin the project."

Dennison outlined the recent financial history of the Missoula Mercantile property.

"The acquisition in 2011 was for about $2.3 million dollars, and nearly $1.2 million was spent for remediation," Dennison said. "Remediation included about $730,000 for removing asbestos-backed tiles, so now the building is cleared to the original load-bearing walls."

Dennison described the marketing being used to sell the building through Zillastate Realty.

"We've worked with folks from the Missoula Downtown Association, the Missoula Economic Development Partnership, and Point Eight Corporate Locators," Dennison said. "We've reached out to governmental institutions, as well as private companies that we know are looking, and we've also reached out to some of the larger companies based here in Missoula."

Jed Dennison of Zillastate Real Estate