The troubled Baha Mar resort casino project in the Bahamas is officially up for sale following the appointment of a Canadian property firm tasked with identifying potential buyers.

This week, the Bahamas Tribune reported that the Deloitte & Touche (Bahamas) firm handling the receivership of the unfinished $3.5b Baha Mar integrated resort had appointed Toronto-headquartered Colliers International to market the property to prospective buyers.

The Bahamas Supreme Court has signed off on the appointment, which is aimed at finding someone to take the property off the hands of its principal creditor, China Export-Import Bank (EXIM), which foreclosed on the property last year after project developer Sarkis Izmirlian found himself unable to pay primary contractor China Construction America (CCA) and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Trouble is, despite Izmirlian’s original claim that the project was 97% complete, other observers have estimated a new buyer would have to invest anywhere from $600m to $1b to bring the project up to snuff and engage in sufficient marketing to disassociate the whiff of failure that has attached itself to the property.