A maker of beverage and food product pouches is in negotiations to purchase a 600,000-square-foot former Boston Apparel Group (BAG) warehouse in West Bridgewater, according to industry sources.

Plymouth-based Cheer Pack is working on the details of a likely purchase of 35 United Drive. That price is well below the roughly $25 million owner AIC Ventures paid in a sale leaseback of the behemoth property with now-bankrupt Women’s Apparel Group, BAG’s parent company, in 2009.

BAG was paying approximately $3 million a year to AIC for rent alone. Couple that with operating costs and the capital improvements BAG was required to make under its 10-year lease agreement, and that number shoots to about $5 million. But the company had only served two years of that sentence when its parent company went belly up, and now AIC is left holding the bag.

Now, AIC is trying to unload the asset as soon as possible. But the property is quirky, to say the least. It has only a couple loading docks, and those are at the far end of the deep, L-shaped building. So the property is nearly impossible to easily break up for multiple users. On top of that, it includes 75,000 square feet of office space.

"With the sale leaseback, you had a private equity-funded company that looks at the deal like Wall Street in real estate," said one real estate executive that asked for anonymity. "Then the company was run into the ground. AIC was getting a great return on the investment, but the sale leaseback is a financial transaction – it has nothing to do with real estate. When you’re left holding the bag like that, you’d better have a damn good piece of real estate, and this property certainly has its problems."

AIC has brought in Michigan-based Tim Kwekel to market the property. While he would not comment on the pending deal, he said he anticipates being able to share some "very positive" news about the property after the New Year.