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These days, it's more common to see would-be condominiums turned into apartments rather than the other way around. But one conversion flop near East Broadway and Craycroft is getting a second chance at going condo, thanks to a lesbian-oriented travel company.

San Francisco-based Olivia Travel is teaming up with the developer of the Condominium at Williams Centre to market the project as a lesbian-friendly condo complex. The roughly 340-unit apartment building, at 5400 E. Williams Blvd., was previously marketed as a condo project but failed to generate enough sales, said Caroline Auza, a real estate broker who specializes in condominiums.

Currently, units at the Williams Centre development are being offered as rentals. The owner of the project, Terry D. Brown, also of San Francisco, did not return a call for comment.

Olivia founder Judy Dlugacz said her organization has been searching for an opportunity to create a lesbian-oriented condo community. The Tucson project would be her organization's first condo complex, she said.

"Olivia has been promising this for many, many years," she said. "Tucson is such a great place for us to do a community. It was just a very lucky, wonderful find."

Dlugacz said Olivia would not take an ownership stake in the development but instead would provide "the Olivia experience and the branding of the complex."

Before units would be sold, the complex would get some upgrades and renovations, including a saltwater pool, she said.

"We're going to premium-ize the development," she said.

The plans are still tentative, Dlugacz said. So far, Olivia has collected refundable deposits from about 50 to 60 possible buyers, Dlugacz said. Plans would probably not move forward, however, until about 300 buyers put down deposits, she said.

The units are slated to be sold for somewhere between $170,000 and $300,000, she said.

After getting red-hot in the boom, the condo market has not been easy in the past year or so, said Auza, whose company is Onsite Realty. Only a few condo-conversions in the recent past are still selling, and only if the price is attractive and the quality is strong, she said.

"As long as things are priced correctly and the project is good, they're selling," she said. "If they're priced incorrectly, they're not moving at all."

For higher-end condos, Auza said, a target price should be around $170 per square foot.

But aiming for a niche market — the lesbian population — might help the Condominium at Williams Centre, Auza said.

"I think that would be an interesting concept," she said.

Separately, another niche condo project is along in the works at nudist resort Mira Vista, on the Northwest Side. The 115-unit time-share condo complex is "getting close to breaking ground," said Wayne Schell, co-owner of Mira Vista.

So far, the developers have deposits from 39 buyers, he said. The 1,260-square-foot units are being sold for $245,000 to $259,000, he said.

Despite the slowdown in the broader economy and real estate market, Mira Vista has high expectations of success because it's reaching "kind of a captive market," Schell said.

"Right now, they are the only condos at a clothing-optional resort that's available in the U.S," he said.

Before going to the nudists in 2006, Mira Vista operated as a gay-and-lesbian-friendly resort, Coyote Moon. But Coyote Moon closed in 2005.