BATON ROUGE - Amazon's reported plan to repurpose the Cortana Mall as a distribution center is inching closer to reality. 

According to the Business Report, the online retailer is pushing ahead with its plan to buyout the site of the one-time mall, though the deal still isn't final.

It was reported in August that the current owner was abruptly ousting all of the remaining tenants to pave the way for a potential sale. Governor John Bel Edwards and the Department of Economic Development reportledy led talks to bring the distribution center to Baton Rouge.

Only a handful of stores remained at Cortana going into 2019, with many tenants pulling out of the struggling mall in recent years. It remains to be seen how the sale would impact Dillard’s Clearance Center, the mall's last anchor tenant.