They mayor explained it would be a greeting and information station for people visiting the city and city hall.
"And Aetna donated it," Giuliano crowed.
As it turns out, there's a silver lining to even the darkest cloud. Aetna, which is moving its headquarters out of the Northwest end of town, is abandoning a huge building, and were about to dispose of acres of furniture.
In a last nod of goodwill toward Middletown, Geen Thazhampallath, former aide to Giuliano, notified the mayor that there was a lot of surplus furniture at the insurance headquarters.
Giuliano sent staffers to Aetna, and they were able to rescue several pieces of furniture slated for disposal, including the receptionist's cubicle. The city is now the proud owner of a new conference table and chairs for room 208, several new desk and side chairs, conference set of sofa and chairs for the mayor's office, and several tables, chairs and storage units.
"All at no cost to the city," Giuliano said. "And they delivered it for free."
Re-use! Even better than recycling! At "free", this was certainly a good deal. I hope we got a lot of good stuff. That was generous of Aetna to offer free delivery as well. This is a far cry from that auto donation idea and the brownstone giveaway fracas. That's Middletown!
ReplyDeleteMaybe Aetna has some paper and pencils they could donate to the schools!
ReplyDeleteIs the City hiring a receptionist to sit there?
ReplyDeleteI took a close look at the receptionist cubicle and it looks like it should be sent over to Vinal Tech for refinishing. There are a lot of wear spots and the fabric part has a lot of water stains.
ReplyDeleteIs there a possible second round of re-cycling with City Hall tables & chairs that are now surplus?
Great news on this re-use of furniture. I would like to know about plans to re-use the Aetna building and land itself, to maintain our tax base. Any proposals out there?
ReplyDeleteI heard the building is to be imploded in September. Being a former Aetna employee, the current building is not resource friendly it's more like a maze inside. I'd like to know if Aetna is going to make the surplus furniture available to the public???
ReplyDelete