OLD ORCHARD BEACH (AP) – This seaside tourist town is working with a Portland real estate broker to find a buyer for The Ballpark, the decrepit stadium that was home in the mid-1980s to the highest level of minor league baseball.

The challenge will be to find the best use for the property, which includes a 53-acre parcel, rather than simply try to receive the highest price, said real estate agent and land use planner Mark Malone of Malone Commercial Brokers.

Old Orchard Beach Town Manager Jim Thomas was hired last summer in part to oversee the redevelopment of the property. He jokingly refers to it as the Old Orchard field of dreams, but most long-term residents would more likely describe it as something of a nightmare.

The Ballpark, which was built in the midst of great hopes, is widely viewed as a monument to poor decision-making by the Town Council. After a resident donated the land for $1 in 1973, the town underwrote the construction of the stadium in the early 1980s to attract a minor league baseball team.

It was home field to the Maine Guides and the Maine Phillies until the team left town for Pennsylvania, leaving Old Orchard Beach with a 6,000-seat concrete stadium and the remainder of a $2.3 million, 20-year loan.

“It’s a sad state of affairs,” Thomas said of the expensive infrastructure that has more recently hosted an annual haunted house and fire department training exercises. It was also used for rock concerts, until neighbors complained about noise and traffic.

Town residents will have to ratify whatever redevelopment plan the Town Council and Malone’s agency come up with. After the council’s original decision to create the stadium, the Old Orchard Beach town charter was changed so the council cannot buy or sell real estate without voter approval.

Thomas says the vote on what to do with the property could be as early as November.

Ideas for the large plot of land east of Old Orchard Beach High School include condominiums, office space and residential housing, according to Thomas. There is also the option of merging it with an adjoining 50 acres the town owns east of Dirigo Drive and selling a larger parcel.

The town manager stresses that the town would gather residents’ input at planned community meetings before drawing up any blueprints for development. Too often in the stadium’s history, townspeople have been left out of the planning process, he said.

Malone says he has already been contacted by several land speculators interested in buying and holding the land, but this wasn’t the sort of deal the town wanted to make.

“The town will be better off to give the property to somebody who would put a $30 million to $40 million project there than to sell it for $3 million to $4 million to somebody who’s just going to sit on it,” he said.

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