A Juneau institution is ending: The state surplus barn will close at the end of June.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, this is going to be sad,\u201d said John Shakespeare, one of about 30 people who gathered Wednesday morning for one of the barn\u2019s last sales. The state is replacing the barn with a new online auction system.<\/p>\n
For decades, going back to when the barn was downtown (it\u2019s now in Lemon Creek), its weekly Wednesday sales have attracted college students and penny-pinching retirees alike.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a little cult thing,\u201d said Ron Klein, a regular shopper.<\/p>\n
They peruse racks of discarded flat-panel computer monitors ($5 each), boxes of black-handled scissors, obscure electronic equipment, old typewriters, dented desks and assorted chairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s good deals, and there\u2019s deals that aren\u2019t so good,\u201d Klein said, referring to a time he bought an expensive device that turned out to be broken.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, he taped joking signs reading \u201cSave Our Surplus\u201d to shelves throughout the warehouse. The signs were printed on a machine bought from surplus, and \u201cI even bought my tape from surplus,\u201d he said, holding up a well-used dispenser.<\/p>\n
He said he doesn\u2019t feel there\u2019s much hope of averting the closure, and the signs were mostly a joke.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know when you\u2019re moving out of a house and can hear the echo once you\u2019ve moved out your furniture? You can hear it in here,\u201d he said. \u201cJust listen.\u201d <\/p>\n
The weekly group of shoppers includes those who get their news from public radio and those who get their news from AM radio. It includes men and women, retired and still-employed. Every Wednesday morning, they gather in the warehouse to swap stories and await its 8:30 a.m. opening.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the guys get together,\u201d Shakespeare said. \u201cThis is our Wednesday.\u201d<\/p>\n
They get coffee, sit, talk, then comb through stacks of metal shelves for treasures discarded by state agencies. <\/p>\n
\u201cI buy my office equipment here,\u201d said Dave Hanna, who runs a concrete business.<\/p>\n
He says his office is full of concrete dust that takes a toll on electronics. It doesn\u2019t make sense to buy new, so he\u2019s bought used copiers and other equipment from the surplus barn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is going to be an abysmal failure,\u201d Hanna said of the barn\u2019s closure.<\/p>\n
Shakespeare agreed. \u201cI don\u2019t see why the state would cut this, because this makes money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tom Mayer, director of the Division of General Services within the Alaska Department of Administration, is in charge of the surplus operation and said that isn\u2019t quite true. The lease on the Lemon Creek warehouse (there\u2019s also one in Anchorage) is $80,000 per year, and as state agencies have seen their budgets cut, less material is being deemed surplus.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause their budgets are smaller, they\u2019re not buying as much stuff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The surplus barn is supposed to fund itself, but with less sales volume, that\u2019s becoming more difficult, he said. The Anchorage surplus warehouse is also closing, for the same reasons.<\/p>\n
Both will be replaced by an online sales system. The current barn employees will stay on the job, processing items deemed surplus by state agencies. They\u2019ll work with property officers within those agencies to put the items online.<\/p>\n
Looking around the warehouse on Wednesday morning, he waved his hand and said that while there might have been 50 or so shoppers in there, there are more than 30,000 people in Juneau, and hundreds of thousands across Alaska.<\/p>\n
Putting surplus sales online (the state already sells some of its surplus items online) makes them available to a wider audience, and other states have already taken similar steps.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the right move for the state,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cOur goal is cheaper, better, faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the \u201ccult\u201d of surplus might be disappointed, \u201cwe shouldn\u2019t be here just to be nice to certain groups,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While Wednesday\u2019s typical morning crowd is usually bearded, men aren\u2019t the only people who shop at the barn. Noelle Derse shopped with her daughter, 2-year-old Esme, who was attracted by a pair of whistles that she proceeded to test.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been coming here 15 years, every week, with all my kids,\u201d Derse said. \u201cI think it\u2019s the best way to recycle.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she\u2019s furnished her home with state-surplus items and continues to find useful items.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this stuff is great,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Asked if she favors the online auction idea, she was quick with a response. \u201cThere\u2019s no way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Last week, she ended up buying a lamp she saw on the shelf, \u201cand if I hadn\u2019t held it and picked it up and turned it on, I wouldn\u2019t have bid on it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She also had high praise \u2014 as did every other person in the warehouse \u2014 for Jeff Campbell, the state employee who has run things at the surplus barn for years.<\/p>\n
John Shakespeare, standing near Campbell\u2019s register, chuckled while sharing memories of Campbell\u2019s homemade cookies and the apple cider he occasionally brings. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd in the 20 years, we\u2019ve never spiked it \u2014 though we\u2019ve tried,\u201d Shakespeare said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
As Derse and her daughter paid for their handful of finds, Campbell leaned over to say hello to Esme. In one hand, he held a brand-new coloring book. In the other was a transparent tackle box full of crayons.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake it pretty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Juneau institution is ending: The state surplus barn will close at the end of June. \u201cYeah, this is going to be sad,\u201d said John Shakespeare, one of about 30 people who gathered Wednesday morning for one of the barn\u2019s last sales. The state is replacing the barn with a new online auction system. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":19809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19808"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}