CLEVELAND, Ohio - Stark Enterprises, a downtown developer with high-rise projects in the hopper, is trying to sell its more modest headquarters office building through an online auction.

The Ten-X Commercial website is offering up the property, at 1350 W. Third St., with an undisclosed minimum dollar amount in mind. Bidding will start at $850,000 on July 11, and the auction is scheduled to end July 13.

Stark doesn't have to sell - and won't, necessarily, if the price isn't right. But the company, with 60 downtown workers and twice that number in other locations, has outgrown its Warehouse District digs and has decided to test the market.

The possible auction of a five-story, single-tenant building - just over 18,000 square feet of office space on a twelfth of an acre - is notable for two reasons.

First, Stark intends to move its offices into the company's nuCLEus project, an ambitious marriage of apartments, a few condominiums, offices, a hotel, stores, restaurants and parking planned for the Gateway District, near Quicken Loans Arena. The developer still hopes to start demolition and site preparations for the project, a potential $550 million endeavor, by the end of this year.

Second, Stark's current home sits at the edge of another development site, a cluster of Warehouse District parking lots where Weston, Inc., and Citymark Capital aim to build an apartment-heavy, mixed-use project. When Weston and Citymark unveiled designs late last year for that site, just shy of 6 acres, the local developers acknowledged that they did not control the Stark building - and that they expected to build around it.

Real estate records show that Stark paid $1.3 million for the property in 2007.

Ezra Stark, the company's chief operating officer, wouldn't say how much money the company wants to see from a potential sale.

Over the last nine years, the developer has renovated the building and erected a pair of billboards, including a digital display, that could generate cash for a new property owner. Cleveland caps the number of billboards downtown and imposes limits for both on-premises and off-premises advertising in the center city.

The Cuyahoga County Fiscal Office estimates that the property is worth $1.2 million. But Stark was asking as much as $2.3 million for the building in 2010, according to records from the CoStar real estate data service.

Once called the Cambridge Building, the century-old structure briefly bore the name Titanic Towers after an entrepreneur bought it and opened the Titanic restaurant on the ground floor in 2004.

The eatery, as its name portended, sank. A replacement restaurant never opened.

Until 2008, Stark had a purchase option and visions of developing the surrounding Warehouse District parking lots. That option fell through, though, and the Stark organization shifted its attention to other projects, including Westlake's Crocker Park, Woodmere's Eton Chagrin Boulevard shopping center and, more recently, potential apartment towers near The Q and atop the 515 Euclid Ave. garage.

For at least six years, Stark has tried, off and on, to find a buyer for the West Third Street building, an island at the edge of an asphalt sea. The Ten-X listing marks the company's most visible attempt to unload the real estate. The website, formerly known as Auction.com, pitches real estate to national and global investors.

"It's totally different from a local broker who's looking for local buyers," Ezra Stark said of taking the online-auction approach. "It's nice to have the timing where the NBA Finals are here, the Republican National Convention, the world's attention is on Cleveland. I do think, with the momentum of Cleveland, it's a good time to list."

The developer is interested in a sale-leaseback deal, in which Stark would continue to occupy its space until new offices are ready at nuCLEus. Plans for that project, between Prospect Avenue and Huron Road, include at least 200,000 square feet of offices. Ezra Stark said the company needs 20,000 to 25,000 square feet.

"We are for sure moving to nuCLEus," he said, adding "Our employees really love working downtown."

Daniel Walsh of Citymark Capital and T.J. Asher of Weston didn't respond to requests for comment about whether they'll bid on the West Third Street site.

In November, they announced plans to build more than 300 apartments, ground-floor retail and parking at the southeast corner of St. Clair Avenue and West Sixth Street, in the first phase of what could become a much larger, multi-year project between West Sixth and West Third streets and St. Clair and Superior avenues.