Surplus stuff: Grand opening set for Wytheville store

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff
Wytheville Enterprise
Published: October 6, 2008

Virginia is a packrat – and an especially eclectic one at that.
Luckily for the residents of Wytheville, though, she’s plenty willing to share her collections.
Whether you’re in the market for electronics or furniture, binders or dishes, or any number of oddball items like a vintage Houston Astros baseball cap or a sorcerer statuette, Wytheville’s revamped state surplus warehouse is likely to have a deal for you.
The expanded outlet will celebrate its grand opening Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at its new location in east Wytheville.
The store, which began moving into the vacant Acme building at 800 E. Main St. in July from its previous spot at 135 S. 4 ½ St., has a new focus on public accessibility.
“It’s kind of a new concept for us,” said Brad Crawford, director of the Surplus Property Management Office for Virginia’s Department of General Services. “It’s kind of an exciting thing to let the public have an opportunity to obtain some of the state property.”
Crawford’s office ensures that unwanted items from state agencies find a home – preferably one other than the landfill.
When a state agency reorganizes, moves to a new office or simply decides it wants new desk chairs, it turns over its superfluous gizmos and gadgets to the surplus property division.
The department first sorts through the items, trashing or recycling anything that is unsalvageable or in poor condition.
In the past, most of the remaining items then went to local governments, other state agencies or select nonprofit organizations.
While those entities continue to get first dibs on the leftover property, the state is making a focused effort through initiatives like the new Wytheville warehouse to let the general public participate in the redistribution of the goods.
Crawford said the old Wytheville facility usually only held random one-day public sales – happenings that could at times be chaotic as large crowds often crammed into the outlet all at once.
The new distribution center, though, is open Monday-Friday to the public (for now from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., although facility manager Floyd Coburn said those times could be tweaked in the future).
The back portion of the store is reserved for the government organizations and nonprofits and the facility is open to those groups from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., but even so, the main floor of the warehouse provides thousands of constantly changing items for bargain-seekers to sift through.
“Hopefully it’s going to be more available to the public,” Crawford said about the revamped center, adding that it was designed to provide a “better environment for the tax-paying public.”
Despite the state’s new emphasis on connecting the public with its surplus property, the warehouse concept remains somewhat of a novelty.
Wytheville’s state surplus distribution center is one of only two in the state along with a facility in Richmond. For people living in other parts of the state, sporadic auctions continue to be the main opportunity to purchase surplus property close to home.
Crawford said Wytheville was chosen for a distribution center because of its accessible location for both the public and western state agencies looking to drop off items.
“It’s kind of a nice central place,” he said.
Although the facility’s formal grand opening isn’t until Tuesday, news of the deals available at the outlet already have spread around town.
Crawford said the new center intentionally quietly opened its doors in early September to ease the transition to daily public access. Word of its opening, though, didn’t stay under wraps for long.
“There must be a great word-of-mouth system down there in Wytheville,” Crawford said. “It’s just been working really well so far.”
That the public has embraced the opportunity to take home Virginia’s odds and ends is no surprise when items like large wooden desks sell for less than $50 and a quality office chair can be had for the price of a fast-food value meal.
And any fan of yard sales could spend hours rooting around the shelves looking for tucked away trinkets like an ice cube tray, an “I’d rather be playing H2O polo” license plate holder, a plastic bejeweled scepter or an orange traffic barrel – all of which were at the warehouse Thursday afternoon.
“It really amazes me sometimes, some of the things I see,” Crawford said, explaining that some of the more unusual items become surplus after they remain unclaimed for months in lost and found bins.
Unlike a yard sale or the public auctions, though, Crawford said there’s no haggling at the distribution center. He said items are assigned a fixed price and all sales are final.
With the publicity generated by Tuesday’s grand opening, which Crawford said is expected to be attended by high-level DGS management and feature a ribbon cutting, the director said he hopes even more people in the area will become aware that Virginia’s leftovers could become their treasures.
“It’s a safer, more comfortable environment,” he said about the new center. “We’ve had good response.”
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .