Thursday, July 8, 2010
F'ed City Hall East garage sale coming soon
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 10:01 AM
Since then, the city has been working to try to make this happen but, believe it or don't, legal restrictions that require the sale of city property to be handled through a bidding process have made the whole situation far more complicated than it should've been.
First, having divided the various items into wholesale lots, the city asked for bids from potential buyers. Only a handful of salvage companies responded and the highest offers were in the neighborhood of a miserable two bits (25 cents to you young'uns) per chair. So, the city switched gears, exploring the possibility of an auction. But the city's auction contractor, figuring that the merchandise wasn't valuable enough to be worth its time, insisted on a buyers premium so high it would've discouraged bids.
Finally, the administration realized that the only way it was going to be able to sell the crap inside CHE is to suspend its own rules and hold a giant garage sale. So, on Tuesday, Councilman Kwanza Hall introduced legislation authorizing the Mayor's office to waive the normal procurement process and hire the Wayne Evans Auction Company to liquidate the contents of the former Sears warehouse.
Assuming Council approves Hall's proposal, I'm told the city would schedule a multi-day sale for sometime in late August. Yes, this means you, John Q. Public, will get a chance to buy your own piece of CHE history — perhaps an old office chair or a lovely filing cabinet.
But don't get too excited yet. First off, the city has no intention of giving shoppers the run of the 2 million-square-foot building, lest someone fall down a freight elevator shaft and end up in Bangalore. So, Mr. Public, you will not be allowed to tour many of the bad-ass places that CL showcased in our "Lost world of City Hall East" photo gallery.
Next, and just as disappointing, many of the items pictured back in April won't be for sale. No, you won't be able to buy a set of '70s-era photocopiers or vendor carts left over from the 1996 Olympics.
Even more troubling is that some of the merchandise has been tossed out, such as the hundreds of nifty wooden boxes used to hold thousands of core samples from sewer drillings. I'm told that Watershed Management, which was in charge of the samples, decided to simply dump them — boxes and all — into a landfill rather than bother with trying to sell them. Now that's government waste.
Comments (4)
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Seems like a no brainer, pass a law for a special exemption for this stuff an allow us to go to a cool garage sale.
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