By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal staff writer
POSTED: 07:50 p.m. EDT, Oct 26, 2009
Are you in the market for a moose head?
Fourteen-foot totem pole?
Twenty or 30 wing chairs or a couple of dozen beds?
Those are some of the items that will be for sale at the University of Akron's first tag sale Thursday through Saturday.
While the sale will include routine metal desks and file cabinets from UA classrooms, the heart of the event will be pieces of Akron's past that in some cases cannot be duplicated.
Those pieces — furniture, memorabilia and antiques — come from the former Quaker Square hotel, shopping and entertainment complex in downtown Akron that UA bought two years ago for $22.7 million.
''There is a good chance that we will sell it all,'' said materials handling director Mike Szczukowski, who has the challenging job of organizing the sale. ''Where else can you buy a headboard and frame of real wood for $65? It's priced to sell.''
The university has converted most of the rooms in the Quaker Square's former Crowne Plaza Hotel into student housing and furnished the rooms with bunk beds and other items better suited to the new tenants.
That has left the university with dozens of pieces of excess furniture. Some of it has been redeployed into UA offices, but much of it no longer has a use.
So the surplus was evaluated by an appraiser for a market price, Szczukowski said. Coffee tables and end tables will go for $75 each, love seats for $200, wing chairs for $75 and couches for $250.
There are so many pieces that Szczukowski won't be able to stuff them all into the bottom floor of the Quaker Square shopping complex, the former location of the General Store and where the sale will be held.
So samples of each piece of furniture will be available at the sale, and buyers will pick up their purchases at the university's furniture ''warehouse'' — the Administrative Service Building on Mill Street, a couple of blocks away.
But it might be the one-of-a-kind items from the General Store and from the rest of the Quaker Square complex that attract the most attention.
Szczukowski has culled a wide variety of antiques and memorabilia that shoppers might remember seeing in the height of the complex's glory days in the 1980s.
There are 14 church pews that are priced from $200 to $375 each, a $300 moose head and bar mirrors and pictures that will cost $10 to $125.
A faded watercolor painting of the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth ships is priced at $125; a vibrant red, blue and gold totem pole for $375; a 10-foot-long butcher block table with vise, at $200; more than a dozen Oriental rugs for $200 each; lobster traps for $25 and $50.
Then there are canister sets. Artificial Christmas trees. Wreaths. Display cases. Shelving. A delicate Queen Anne desk from the 1800s. Neon lights.
Some items will be sold by sealed bids: woodworking equipment, vehicles and recreation and exercise equipment.
There is so much stuff that Szczukowski hasn't had time to get appraisals on specialty pieces, such as huge slabs of stained glass from churches that are stacked against walls, chairs, tables and memorabilia from trains.
All those will be offered for sale at a later, as yet unscheduled, date when the dust clears from this week's sale.
Sale hours will be 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The university will accept cash, Visa and MasterCard. No checks. All purchases must be removed from campus by the close of the sale Saturday.
Carol Biliczky can be reached at 330-996-3729 or cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com.
