HALSTEAD ? A listing on the Internet auction site eBay has yielded a potential buyer for a building that housed a hospital that closed three years ago.

Halstead Hospital, in debt about $4.5 million, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2002 and closed several months later. Valley Hope, a nonprofit drug and alcohol rehabilitation agency, bought the building at a bankruptcy sale for about $425,000 two years ago.

Valley Hope, based in Norton, uses just under a third of the 264,000-square-foot building for a clinic. It has operated out of the building for more than five years, with 50 employees and about 40 patients at any given time.

But it would like to sell the property and has it listed with Prudential Dinning Beard Realtors of Wichita. Andrea Cavgalar of the real estate firm said a Florida developer saw the Internet listing and has put it under contract for $1.9 million.

She wouldn’t identify the developer but said he was in town last week to look at the property.

“I’m 85 percent positive about it being sold,” she said Monday.

Two potential buyers backed out last year, and Valley Hope officials remain cautious about prospects for a sale this time.

“We just have to wait and see,” said Dallas Uhrich, director of the Halstead unit of Valley Hope, which wants to continue occupying the space after the sale. “There has been some interest expressed in the past that didn’t materialize, and we were all very excited at that time. I think that probably, for most of the staff, we are of a mind to just wait and see. We hope this happens.”

Cavgalar said she is fairly sure the building will not be used for a hospital again.

“Newton has taken the market for that,” she said of the county-seat town less than 10 miles away. Possibilities include a nursing home, veterans’ center, office space or some type of specialized medicine.

Should the deal fall through, Cavgalar said another potential buyer also had been ready to sign a contract.

“We really like the gentleman who has the contract on it, and I feel pretty positive that it will close,” she said. “But it is not over until the fat lady sings.”