The contents of the Akron City Center hotel go up for sale Thursday, clearing out decades of furniture ahead of the building’s renovation.
The hotel opened in 1971 as a Holiday Inn and was one of the most prestigious hotels in the city. But it has changed owners several times since the 1990s, and there were few guests in the past decade.
Jim Long is with Dayton-based International Content Liquidations, and he’s spent the past two weeks organizing the sale of everything from banquet chairs to chandeliers from the now-closed hotel.
“Their bad fortune is our good fortune: there are some upscale things and some not-upscale-things, and we have priced it accordingly. Sleep Number beds for $150? I challenge you to find one for a cheaper price.”
Construction is slated to begin this summer to turn the 19-story building into a mix of apartments and hotel rooms, with a restaurant and culinary school inside as well.
Long says the massive sale also includes many pieces of artwork.
“There are some original paintings that are of the Akron skyline from various views. And then on every elevator landing, there was another skyline of Akron. Up on the 19th floor they had some nice paintings and some nice lithographs and we’ve kind of created a little sale-within-a-sale of those items.”
Long expects everyone from bargain-hunting students to artists to hotel and catering companies will be shopping at the hotel. In the 1980s, it gained a degree of national notoriety as the site for a proposed swingers’ convention.
