CLEVELAND, Ohio - Stone faces, their mouths agape, gaze over Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood from the facade of the former St. Michael's School on Scranton Road. In alcoves, white marble saints look skyward, as if contemplating what comes next - or awaiting a savior.

The vacant building certainly needs a champion. In the wake of a foreclosure, the early 1900s Gothic Revival structure is scheduled for auction today.

The lowest acceptable bid for the property, which also includes a former convent, is $600,000. That's two-thirds of what the real estate is worth, based on a recent appraisal, and the minimum required by the court process.

Auctioneer George Kiko isn't sure whether St. Michael's will sell, despite its location on the edge of one of Cleveland's hottest neighborhoods. He's talked to representatives of charter schools, apartment developers and a Kentucky scrapper interested in peeling off the statues, tearing down the building and selling off the parts. But the price - along with the size of the project - has been a deterrent.

The scrapper passed, Kiko added.

"There has been some good interest," he said during a recent tour of the school, where the paint is pulling away from the walls of the combination auditorium-and-gym and cold seems to seep from every crevice. "I'm hopeful. Very hopeful."

Built as a companion to nearby St. Michael the Archangel Church, at Scranton and Clark Avenue, the school is a remnant of an era when German immigrants flocked to the city's near-West Side. In the 1960s, the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland merged St. Michael's and three other schools into Cleveland Central Catholic, which served more than 1,600 students early on.

As Cleveland's population dwindled, though, so did enrollment. One by one, the schools closed. In 2003, the diocese shuttered St. Michael's and consolidated Central Catholic onto one campus, in Slavic Village. The following year, the diocese sold the Tremont properties, at 3146 Scranton Road and 2200 Prame Ave., to a nonprofit group that repurposed the space as offices.

The property owner, West Side Ministries, was affiliated with Community Care Network, Cleveland Christian Home and other organizations focused on mental health, substance-abuse and social services, according to public filings. An attorney who worked with the nonprofits said that funding cuts, business failures and mergers between like-minded groups gradually left the St. Michael's building empty and vulnerable.

Early last year, KeyBank filed a foreclosure lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court over the unpaid balance on a nearly $2.1 million loan. Court records show that the bank is owed more than $1.78 million in principal and interest.

It's unclear whether a developer will be willing to pay even a third of that figure this week. Though auctions tend to attract publicity and can draw a crowd, they require buyers to stomach a lot of risk up-front. There's not much time to line up financing or study the feasibility of a project.

The St. Michael's building sits in a historic district, making a redevelopment eligible for federal and state tax credits for preservation. But the former school, unlike the church, isn't a city landmark. That means it's not protected from demolition.

"I am a little concerned," said Cory Riordan, executive director of the nonprofit Tremont West Development Corp. "Though I think that the price is high enough to keep detrimental uses from taking up residence there, I think the challenge is that an investor without knowledge of the neighborhood or city conditions comes in."

Riordan said Tremont West has talked to developers and KeyBank over the past five years or so, in hopes of encouraging a more traditional sale. That stretch of Scranton is bookended by new and anticipated investments, from the townhouses and renovation projects inching closer from central Tremont to MetroHealth's planned campus transformation, less than a mile to the south.

If a buyer emerges for St. Michael's and the former convent, now leased to a substance-abuse recovery program, then Kiko will also auction off a nearby vacant lot that's associated with the buildings. If the bidding's too low, then the discussion will head back to court. The lender will have to decide what to do.

KeyBank didn't have much to say about the situation. Community Care Network and Cleveland Christian Home didn't respond to phone calls.

Riordan said he's prepared to work with the city to designate the school as a landmark, if the threat of demolition arises. But he's hoping that a rescuer - an apartment developer, an office use or another preservation-minded buyer - will emerge.

"I think that the market is knocking on the door, and the interest in the neighborhood has always been there," he said. "In some ways, it's good that it's going to auction, because we know there will be movement. But we're just a little fearful of what that outcome will be."