Bargain hunters hit Sutter hospital sale in Santa Rosa

Twenty-six years after she left the former Community Hospital with her daughter in her arms, Lisa Williams walked out of the building with some decidedly less valuable items.

The Windsor resident emerged from the shuttered Sutter Medical Center in Santa Rosa Saturday morning with two wall clocks, for which she paid just a few dollars each, and an old TV, which was free.

“It was kind of cool,” said the mother of four, three of whom were born at the Chanate Road campus. “It was a nice little memory.”

Hundreds of bargain hunters descended on the 78-year-old hospital building for the start of a two-day liquidation sale.

The hospital closed late last month as Sutter opened its brand new $292 million facility off Highway 101 next to the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts north of Santa Rosa.

People wandered through corridors and examination rooms cluttered with hundreds of file cabinets, waiting room chairs, bed-side tables and bookshelves. Prices ranged from $250 for a salad bar to 50 cents for small plastic organizing trays.

Plenty of items showed either their age or obsolescence, including several dusty slide projectors on rolling carts and dented electric baseboard heaters. Others seemed nearly new, including dozens of flat-screen computer monitors.

It was difficult to imagine how some of the items would sell at any price. Waste bins covered in biohazard stickers. A room full of rolling commodes. A cringe-inducing examination table with metal stirrups.

Some bore reminders of the challenges faced by workers trying to provide 21st century medical care in a building constructed in 1937.

“Don’t use this if the A/C is on or the fuse will blow,” read a note on a microwave. “Use the one by the time clock.”

“No popcorn” it added.

In the parking lot, Bryce Fruiht loaded a $20 chair and $3 wall clock into his pickup. He was tempted to buy more but resisted.

“I almost bought a mop bucket for $30, but then I realized I didn’t need it,” Fruiht said.

The sale continues Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.