Verbal Contract with Witnesses Help Needed

We are located in the state of South Carolina.

During last summer (summer of 2007) I entered into both a written agreement for a lease to purchase on a commercial property along with a verbal agreement regarding certain terms of purchasing the property.

Basically the property was built for a local petroleum distribution company who's closed back in 2001 so the property had been sitting vacant since then.

I agreed upon a purchase price for the property and that it would be the responsibility of the current owner to remove all tanks and evidence of the oil company and that they must also perform an environmental study and give me a clear bill of health from DHEC.

The purchase price, lease price, details of providing the clear DHEC report and that an independent contractor would be removing all oil tanks etc... were all documented within the written contract.

The problem is that both the means of achieving the removal and the timeframe in which it would be done were all agreed verbally but with at least 4 independent witnesses.

I had agreed verbally with the current owner that they must be complete and the property sold to me no later than January 1st 2008 and that he would have an independent contractor from out of state remove all the oil companies property within 2 weeks from the 1st of November.

Shortly after signing our written agreement the owner then decided that he no longer wanted the agreed independent contract to do the removal and that he had a friend who had the machinery to do the job. As of the end of January 2008 the owner had only just had all of the oil companies property removed and as of today April 13th 2008 the environmental study is still not complete.

My problem has now escalated as my company is trying to expand our business and that we had worked with an independent loan broker who had put everything in place to finance the property by the end of December start of January now with the huge changes in the economy, lending industry we are now no longer able to find a lender to finance the the purchase the property or secure the capital needed to expand my business running us the possible risk of actually loosing everything and going out of business.

I have talked with the own over and over every single week explaining that he needs to get things done and now that things have escalated to this current states he simply refuses to acknowledge that we have a verbal agreement/gentleman agreement regarding our terms and simply tells me that there is nothing written in our contract that details that he should have competed things by now!

We are not only in a position where our business could close due to this person wasting our time we have also spent around $30,000 in renovations on this property preparing for our expansion at the start of January 2008.

Our verbal contract has at least 4 independent witnesses so I want to know if I have a good case against this seller and what recourse I may have.

Any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.

I've noticed that quite a few people have view my post but no has given a reply.

Does anyone reading this have any type of feedback/input in how to approach and handle this matter?