Cleveland parking lot operator and longtime real estate owner James Kassouf heads an investor group that is closing in on buying the 40-story Tower at Erieview and the Galleria, 1301 E. Ninth St., from lender-owner RAIT Financial Trust of Philadelphia.

Tenants in the building have received a legal document indicating Erieview Acquisition LLC, an Ohio limited liability corporation that lists Kassouf as its president, is the prospective owner of downtown's fourth-largest skyscraper and the attached glass-topped Galleria, a mall with multiple vacancies.

The circulation of such a document indicates the pending transaction is in its final stages. Sources familiar with the situation said the Kassouf-led group expects to close within the month and will pay about $30 million for the long-troubled property. Joseph Kassouf, one of James Kassouf's sons, has met with brokerages seeking to represent the office tower and has indicated the new owners are considering following through on a plan to convert part of the tower to apartments. More than 250,000 square feet of the complex is empty, according to online real estate data firm CoStar.

The Kassoufs have been keenly interested in the 400-space parking garage underneath the complex, one of the sources said, a reflection of the family's nearly 40-year history operating parking lots in downtown Cleveland. The Kassoufs operate Metro Parking Systems, which operates a large parking lot overlooking the lakefront between West Third and West Sixth streets, and others.

Said to be part of the buying group is Robert Corna, a designer who has been involved through the years with Nautica Entertainment Complex owner Jeffrey Jacobs in the 1980s and K&D Group's Stonebridge project, both in the city's riverfront Flats area.

Corna late last year posted a YouTube video that includes concepts for redoing the complex by adding apartment towers straddling Galleria and recreating the mall as a lush green space. Corna has accompanied Kassouf in a meeting with one prospective local investor who chose not to participate in the transaction. However, one of the sources said the concept has since evolved to drop its most intriguing — and expensive — component: two high-rise apartment towers that might have been built over part of Galleria.

The deal was on, then off last winter and now is on again. The offering was even circulated again among prospective buyers in the early summer by HFF, the global brokerage retained by RAIT to sell the property. However, the Kassouf-led group outbid others again. One insider said the 1-million-square-foot property will trade for about $30 million.

Kassouf was an early investor in downtown Cleveland's Warehouse District. He continues to own the Johnson Block Building, 1370 W. Sixth St., and Liberty Textile Building, 1777 W. Sixth. Liberty Textile, which dates from 1890, has not been renovated and appears to be used for storage. Kassouf won an allocation for $5 million in Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credits for a proposed $20 million conversion of the building to apartments as part of a plan that would include building apartments on an adjoining parking lot that a Kassouf affiliate owns and Metro operates.

The elder Kassouf divides his time between Cleveland and Beirut, Lebanon, Joseph Kassouf told Crain's in July 2017 for an article about the Liberty Textile project, which has not proceeded. The younger Kassouf at that time said that the family business wanted to do additional real estate development in Cleveland.

Joseph Kassouf, reached by phone, said he could not discuss the Erieview deal because his cell phone reception was poor, and a return call was not received. James Kassouf did not return a call left last Wednesday, July 25, at Metro's office.

Tenants and real estate sources spoke on grounds they not be identified because they are not principals in the transaction or are bound by nondisclosure agreements from the RAIT offering. RAIT did not return inquiries about the pending transaction.

The high-vacancy Galleria, which now includes several office tenants, was added when the property was expanded in the 1980s by the former Jacobs, Visconsi, Jacobs Co., which then operated a mall empire around the nation. The property later was returned to its lender and sold to an investor group led by Bethesda, Md.-based Werner Minshall in 2001. Minshall added several top-tier tenants to the property through the years, but also lost several due to local closings in mergers and acquisitions. RAIT assumed control of the property in 2016.

Although several insiders say the skyscraper has great value, the operating costs for the enclosed mall ruin the property as an investment. Rico Pietro, a principal at Cushman & Wakefield Cresco, said the property will need an active owner and substantial investments to compete in the city's office market.

RAIT got the property listed on the U.S. Register of Historic Places. That would entitle the building for federal and state historic tax credits for a qualifying adaptive reuse project, which developers say is crucial to restoring vacant structures.

Tower at Erieview is among several structures constructed as part of Cleveland's Erieview urban renewal plan, largely considered a failure by planners, to rejuvenate downtown in the era of suburban flight. The plan's primary result was creating multiple parking lots downtown. Several of today's parking lots date to the demolition in the 1960s of blocks of old commercial and residential properties.