The owners of Doncaster Sheffield Airport have rejected an offer from Doncaster Council to buy the site, the city's mayor has said.
Ros Jones said the council was now considering Peel Group's alternative proposal of a potential leasehold sale.
The local authority is preparing legal action to force a sale if an agreement can not be reached.
Peel Group closed the airport in November last year, saying it was no longer financially viable.
The BBC has contacted Peel Group for a comment.
The council said last month it planned to pursue a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) after its application for a judicial review of the decision to close the airport was rejected.
Ms Jones said the authority was "keen to avoid a costly legal battle if at all possible" to keep the airport open and had approached Peel to discuss the potential freehold purchase of the site.
She said that would "secure its future" ahead of the CPO process, and "make the transaction considerably easier and quicker" but Peel declined the approach.
"However, they have proposed a potential leasehold sale, which we are considering, whilst we continue with the preparatory stages of a CPO," she said.
A leasehold sale would mean the council owned the airport for a set period but would eventually return it to Peel and would not own the land it is built on.
The last passengers touched down at the South Yorkshire airport on 4 November.
Peel said at the time it had received "no credible proposal" to buy the site, which it said was not profitable.
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