Asking Price for GM Plant Drops : Property: The auto maker marks down its Van Nuys facility from $50 million to $30 million in a bid to lure buyers to the site, which closed two years ago.

Nearly two years after the last car rolled off the assembly line at the General Motors-Van Nuys plant, the auto maker has slashed the asking price for the 100-acre site from $50 million to $30 million.

Is GM any closer to making a sale?

Despite some recent rumblings in real estate circles about negotiations with prospective buyers, many observers doubt that a sale is imminent.

“We have a few offers that we’re negotiating back and forth,” said Mike Clark, one of six Cushman & Wakefield real estate brokers marketing the GM property.

But he would provide no details. “Of late, we’ve had some interest in the facility,” is all that GM spokesman Chuck Licari would say.

Bill Pentz, vice president at Daum Commercial & Industrial Real Estate in Woodland Hills, said there is talk in the local real estate industry that two developers are negotiating a deal to buy the GM plant and convert one-third of it to retail use, leaving the remainder for industrial use.

As with other real estate transactions, a final deal would probably depend on the developers’ success in securing tenants for the property, he said.

But many parties that have shown interest in the GM plant have come and gone.

Ideas for new uses for the site have been proposed and then scrapped.

Laurel Shockley, deputy director of the state Trade and Commerce Agency in Los Angeles, said she has shown the GM site to several potential buyers, including Anheuser-Busch Inc., which chose instead to open a canning plant near Riverside.

Other companies that have looked at the facility “have pretty much ruled out GM,” Shockley said, because the site is still relatively expensive and would require substantial renovation.

Pentz said he had hoped to interest one of his clients in the plant for a large discount retail store.

But the city has discouraged this use because retailers generally offer low-paying jobs.

Despite the reduced asking price for the property, some real estate specialists say it could take several years to sell.

“Even at $30 million, it would be awfully tough,” said Seth Dudley, senior vice president at commercial real estate broker Julien J. Studley Inc. in Los Angeles.

Jim Schriner, a partner at PHH Fantus, a New York firm that advises manufacturers on selecting sites, said that in the next few years some Asian and European auto makers are expected to open assembly plants in the United States.

Would one of them would buy the 47-year-old GM plant?

“I wouldn’t sit on the property waiting for it,” Schriner said.