{"id":244876,"date":"2012-02-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/hillcrest-sign-goes-to-obelisk\/"},"modified":"2012-02-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T08:00:00","slug":"hillcrest-sign-goes-to-obelisk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/hillcrest-sign-goes-to-obelisk\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillcrest sign goes to Obelisk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obelisk Shoppe Brett Serwalt wins auction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Por Ashley Mackin | Editor SDUN <\/strong><\/p>\n

The 1984 Hillcrest sign was sold to Brett Serwalt of the Obelisk Shoppe after a three-day auction. From Jan. 30 at 10 a.m. to Feb. 1 at 5 p.m., community members and business owners could bid on the sign. After 19 bids, Serwalt was the winner. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were on the edge of our seats watching the bids come in during [the] final minutes of the auction,\u201d said Lisa Weir, marketing and communications director of the Hillcrest Business Association (HBA). The HBA put the sign up for auction. <\/p>\n

Weir explained the proceeds from the sale of the sign go towards numerous? projects in the Hillcrest business district including new trees, trash cans?and lights along Fifth Avenue. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are happy to announce that a fair process was created for ownership of the 1984 Hillcrest sign and that the sign has found it’s home with Brett [Serwalt] of Obelisk. The funds raised from the procurement of the 1984 Hillcrest sign will go right back into the business district and the sign will be available for public view once Brett’s store has re-opened,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

The Obelisk Shoppe, located at 1029 University Ave. in Hillcrest, temporarily closed after a fire destroyed the space that housed Obelisk, along with several other businesses and apartments, on July 6, 2011. <\/p>\n

Serwalt said he looks forward to having the sign in his new store. He explained it was during the store\u2019s redesign that acquiring the sign came to mind. <\/p>\n

\u201cI really wanted to do something special and unique, since it\u2019s an urban boutique,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen the sign idea came along, I thought this would be absolutely perfect because it would be in a 1,500-square-foot store and an item that size would be very dramatic,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The sign is 25 feet long and weighs 800 pounds. <\/p>\n

Serwalt, whose winning bid was $5,200, said he was motivated to bid as much and as often as he did because of his objection to plans for the sign from other bidders. <\/p>\n

Two of these bidders, Darin Erb of Winn\u2019s Barbershop and Chris Shaw of Urban Mo\u2019s Bar and Grill, jointly bid on the sign. Previously, both Erb and Shaw said the sign would be split in half, separating the front from the back so each business could display a sign that reads \u2018Hillcrest\u2019 if they were to win the auction. Erb said half would go in front of Winn\u2019s Barbershop, and the other half would go in front of Shaw\u2019s new restaurant. <\/p>\n

Serwalt said, \u201c[That] motivated me to spend more than I wanted to, to make sure the sign was not split in half or put into a nightclub.\u201d Nick Moede of Rich\u2019s Nightclub was also bidding on the sign, as was Cecelia Moreno of Crest Caf\u00e9. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese are all businesses I support,\u201d Serwalt said. \u201cI think these businesses owners are really cool people, [but] I thought the idea of cutting it in half [was] a horrible idea.\u201d He also said he thought there should have been some stipulations put in place by the HBA to prevent alterations, such as cutting it in half, \u201cunless you are going to restore it, with its original color of paint and color neon and the same dimensions,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

In the end, Serwalt said, any potential stipulations don\u2019t matter since he won the auction. <\/p>\n

He explained his strategy for winning the auction came down to the last few minutes. \u201cIn the last five minutes, everyone stopped bidding, and it was at $4,950,\u201d he said. The minimum increment to add to a bid was $50. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thought all the others would bid it up to $5,000 and they [were] all going to click at the last second and it would come down to whoever\u2019s click registers last,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I waited until there was 15 or 20 seconds left in the auction and I bid $5,200 thinking if everybody bids $50 increments I\u2019ll trump them and by the time they saw my bid they wouldn\u2019t have time to place another bid and that\u2019s exactly what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serwalt said, \u201cI\u2019m really pleased that Obelisk is going to be the new caretaker for the sign and I think it will be awesome, not only to have this really amazing showpiece to put into our store, but also because Obelisk has this historical connection to the community that it has been serving for [almost] 20 years now.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obelisk Shoppe Brett Serwalt wins auction By Ashley Mackin | SDUN Editor The 1984 Hillcrest sign was sold to Brett Serwalt of the Obelisk Shoppe after a three-day auction. From Jan. 30 at 10 a.m. to Feb. 1 at 5 p.m., community members and business owners could bid on the sign. After 19 bids, Serwalt […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":244875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Hillcrest sign goes to Obelisk","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}