Everything's for sale at Naperville hotel liquidation

Christina Szombathy saw the sale sign and did a quick U-turn into the parking lot of the former Holiday Inn Select in Naperville.

“I feel like a kid in a candy store right now,” the Naperville woman said.

She already had grabbed a couple of leather-look wastebaskets priced at $1 and a stack of sturdy wooden hangers, only 25 cents each. She had her eye on a fluffy white comforter.

A liquidation sale has started at the shuttered hotel, slated to undergo a $30 million renovation and reopen in March 2012 as a full-service Marriott.

“You've got a 420-room hotel, and all the guest room furnishings and the restaurant furniture and the barroom furniture have got to go,” said Jim Long, project manager for International Content Liquidators.

Marriott donated some furniture and food to three local charities, and institutional buyers such as hotels and banquet halls have snapped up items in quantity.

Now the formerly elegant ballroom with its striking modern crystal chandeliers — yes, they're for sale, too — is a bargain basement for contractors and curiosity seekers.

Plump, snow-white pillows, $3 each, are piled in one corner. In-room coffee makers ($9) fill a table. Framed hotel art, just $14, is stacked against the wall.

“The frame alone is worth more than that,” said Pete Nolidis of Naperville, who bought two pastel prints for his Florida place.

He eyed a frosted glass wall sconce, a steal at $10, but put it back.

“I'm actually going to come back with my wife, because I don't want to get anything before she approves of it,” he said.

But the best deal might be the “room package” for $218, which includes two headboards, a nightstand, an armoire, a desk, desk chair and a bed bench, all in matching honey-toned wood — if you don't mind your home looking like a Holiday Inn.

Intrepid shoppers can even go up to the guest rooms on floors 2, 3, and 4 to look for, say, a toilet or some carpeting.

“Really, what people like is the scavenger hunt of it all,” Long said.

Sale hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The sale will continue until everything's gone, Long said.

“I expect that will be near the end of the month,” he said.

Amid the thrill of the hunt, one shopper struck a bittersweet note, even as she scouted for a table for her sewing machine.

“I'm with the Exchange Club of Naperville and we met in this hotel for years and we miss it,” said Trish Krenick of Naperville. “This hotel has a bunch of memories associated with it.”

Hotel's furnishings for sale

Want to trick out your house like a hotel room? Here are some of the items seen Thursday at the hotel liquidation sale at 1801 N. Naper Blvd., Naperville:

• 25-inch TV, &36;39

• Entertainment armoire to put it in, &36;90

• In-room refrigerator, &36;49

• Desk phone for calling room service instead, &36;8

• In-room coffee makers, &36;5 and &36;9

• Luggage bench, two for &36;15

• Upholstered chair and matching ottoman, &36;60

• Floor lamp, &36;29

• Iron, &36;6

• Stair stepper from the hotel's fitness center, &36;350