YOUNGSTOWN — With only one potential buyer left, city officials expressed optimism that they’ll be able to come to a deal to sell the downtown 20 Federal Place building for redevelopment.

The city is negotiating with Desmone Architects of Pittsburgh for a potential deal after Downtown Development Group of Warren withdrew, Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and Finance Director Kyle Miasek said.

“It’s promising,” Brown said Monday of Desmone. “I sat in on their presentation. I like the premise.”

But Brown said: “It’s not a fast process. They have big ideas. We’ll see a lot more concrete information in the next few months.”

He added: “It’s hard to say if we’ll have something by the end of the year. We’re happy with the Desmone proposal and hope to have something.”

If all goes well, Miasek said he hopes Desmone can stick to the original schedule for the project and make a presentation sometime next month to city council and be selected as the company to redevelop the city-owned building.

The outline by the city and Steadfast City Economic and Community Partners, the St. Louis firm hired to design and oversee the building’s redevelopment, was for an agreement to be finished by October.

Downtown Development, the only company to submit a formal proposal for the 20 Federal Place redevelopment by the June 1 deadline, recently withdrew.

Desmone submitted a proposal June 16 after the city gave it additional time. Mark Marvin, Downtown Development’s president and owner, said at the time he was concerned about the city extending the deadline.

Also, Hunter Morrison, the city’s planning consultant, initially said there were no proposals by the June 1 deadline. After reading an article in The Vindicator about that, the city law department determined that Downtown Development had turned in a formal proposal.

But Marvin said Monday the Desmone extension wasn’t the reason for his company’s withdrawal.

He pointed to other problems.

“The building is not managed well from a maintenance standpoint and even after our due diligence walk-through, the team taking us through left more questions than answers,” he said.

“Further, in a review of the rental roll and the offices that are currently in existence, it would be very difficult to perform the work in the manner we were suggesting while keeping tenants. Finally, that rent roll had several offices occupied by city officials that were paying zero rent and one client (VXI Global Solutions, a call center) on three floors that is paying almost one-third of what the actual rent should have been.”

Marvin added: “All in all, I would love to do the project, but the still-unknowns in the building and the manner in which we wanted to go about renovating could not be attained.”

Downtown Development has renovated properties in Warren, including the Robins Theatre, the Mahoning Building and CharBenay’s Wine on the River.

Desmone is largely an architectural firm and has collaborated with other companies on projects.

The city purchased 20 Federal Place in November 2004 after Phar-Mor, a national retail store company, went out of business. The property at 20 W. Federal St. was the Phar-Mor Centre, the company’s corporate headquarters. Before that, it was the flagship location of Strouss’ department store for several decades.

The city has tried unsuccessfully a few time to sell the 332,000-square-foot, 95-year-old building.

The Appalachian Regional Commission last year awarded a $40,000 contract to Steadfast City to provide technical and marketing assistance to the city for 20 Federal Place.

Steadfast presented a $34.5 million rehabilitation proposal for the downtown building in March with apartments mixed with office space on the upper four floors, an improved food court on the first floor, and technology firms, small businesses and meeting space on the second and third floors with a bowling alley, bar and malt shop in the basement.