Central Huron Mayor Jim Ginn says the sale of the former Bluewater Centre for Young Offenders is being finalized with the municipality.
The building was officially closed in 2012 and sits on 300 acres off of Highway 21, south of Goderich.
"The first thing is to demolish the building. It is far beyond repair. There are issues with mould in it. The army was let in to practice some of their rescue maneuvres, there are holes in the walls, so absolutely no chance of saving anything on the building, it's got to be demolished," said Ginn.
An expression of interest was put out a few years ago to determine what could be done with the building.
Ginn says they received a lot of responses and they've been negotiating with one person since then and they're continue negotiations with that person.
"But we want to be able to direct development too, so, a lot of times in Huron County, properties get bought up and the owner just, kind of, sits on them and waits for the value to go up, but we didn't want that to happen. There used to be 200 jobs in there when that building was open and we want some of those jobs back," said Ginn.
Ginn says there are still a few details to be worked out but they're essentially buying the property at basic farm land values, which is $17,000 to $18,000 an acre.
