Judy Frazier, owner of On The Veranda, a used furniture store in St. Petersburg, stands with a chair she picked up from one of the Biltmore’s luxury suites.
BELLEAIR – Nothing about selling the Belleview Biltmore is easy; the liquidation sale alone that began July 9 might run for 45 days, according to Don Hayes, the man in charge.
“We figure we’ll be at around $300,000 by the time it’s over,” estimated Hayes, who works for National Content Liquidators of Dayton, Ohio.
His firm was hired by the Biltmore owners to handle the sale. From the beginning, handling it was the operative word as several hundred people lined up before 10 a.m. for the opening day.
Customers began early forming a line that stretched from the back entrance of the hotel into the parking lots that were already filled by 9 a.m. At the top of the stairway two women sat patiently waiting for the doors to open.
Pat Bogel and Estelle Sztuczko, friends from Largo, said they had arrived by 8:45 a.m. hoping to find, “bargains,” but then admitted they were there more out of curiosity and to have a final look into the historic hotel before the renovation began.
Hotel security opened the doors at 10, admitting the first 100 people who quickly dispersed down the hall disappearing into side rooms that were once the hotel’s museum, a gift shop and a beauty salon as they looked for something useful, unique, or something they simply couldn’t live without.
Chairs, tables, lamps and bureaus lined the walls of a hallway and in the main ballroom a cavernous interior filled with linens, stem ware, dishes and a mountain of pillows looked like the warehouse from an “Indiana Jones” movie as shoppers and treasure hunters dug through aisle after aisle of slightly worn hotel accessories.
There were tables lined with gleaming serving dishes, warming trays and chafing dishes; enough for a dozen weddings or a small political convention.
Venturing further down any hallway led to more treasures: a $1,280 sideboard with richly carved reliefs and stained from years of buffet service still had the appearance of stately dignity that promised years of faithful service to the right owner.
Portraits peered out of every room at passersby as if hoping to be left in their original frame to stay a part of the Biltmore as it was, though that would not be the case.
The planned renovation is less about the past than it is about the future. The new Biltmore, targeted to reopen in 2012 will be full of new chafing dishes, portraits, linens and chairs.
A liquidation sale means the old and worn and perhaps no longer valued things have to go; they’re not part of the Biltmore anymore. For others like Bogel and Sztuczko, the sale is perhaps more about taking a last look and remembering the White Queen of the Gulf as she was and taking a bit of that past home to keep the memories intact.
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