This has been a Boise institution for 88 years. It’s moving to a new location
Another Idaho institution is vanishing from the Boise landscape.
After 88 years, the iconic old barn at 2912 W. Main St. will no longer be Main Auction.
And it’s been in the same family — for four generations — that whole time.
“That was the hardest part of this decision,” David Wesely Jr., who has owned the business for the past 18 years, told me in an interview Thursday from his office at Main Auction. “When I first started working here, part of the draw was that it’s a family business. We’re such a large part of the community. We’ve been here so long and the history of what we’ve done here. But ultimately, it was a business decision.”
After a lot of thought and a lot of praying, Wesely and his wife, Janet, decided to sell the property to neighbor Eberlestock, an outdoor gear manufacturer that approached them with an offer.
“We had not been actively looking at selling it, but when the opportunity presented itself, Janet and I looked at the bigger picture and decided it was the right move for us,” Wesely wrote in a note to his customers.
But Main Auction isn’t closing; it’s just moving. Wesely is building a new warehouse south of Boise on property he owns. He figures it will take about a year to get the new building up and running.
In the meantime, online auctions are continuing until all inventory has sold, which he expects to be by the end of April. From there, the business will transition to onsite auction services at the sites of estate and business liquidation sales, until the new warehouse is built.
With the new building, Wesely said Main Auction will be able to handle more estates and have space for larger items.
“We are selling the old barn and going to be building a new facility out south of town,” Wesely said. “It’s going to be exciting for our business to be able to move into the future.”
History of Main Auction
The property comes with a long history — and a lot of memories.
Paul Owens started Main Auction in 1938, on the other side of Fairview Avenue in a little lean-to structure. He moved to the current location in 1940 and built the facility that’s there today shortly after World War II.
After many years of running the auction, Owens sold the business to his nephew, Robert Wesely.
In 1976, Robert Wesely, who had six children who all worked at the business over the years, sold Main Auction to his son, Danny Wesely.
Danny Wesely owned and operated the auction the longest: 32 years. David Wesely Jr., Danny’s nephew, started working there in 2001, when he was 21. By 2008, he bought the business from his uncle.
Saturday tradition at the auction
For as long as I’ve lived in Idaho, the past 20 years, I’ve heard about people going to the Main Auction on Saturdays. Sure, they’d sometimes buy something or they’d go looking for something specific. But many times, it was just the thing to do. The Idaho Statesman has done at least two feature stories on the business over the past 20 years.
“It wasn’t just an auction — it was an event,” Wesely said. “It was time for people to see their friends and make sure their neighbors were doing OK.”
When a Facebook user posted the news about the sale of the property on a Boise history group page Wednesday, hundreds of people reacted, and more than 100 posted comments, many sharing their memories of Saturdays at the Auction.
Wesely said the auction would typically draw 600-800 people, sometimes up to 1,000.
“We’d start at 10 o’clock in the morning, and our deal was we sold until the building was empty,” Wesely said. “And, you know, the average was 12 to 14 hours, but there were many auctions that ran till 2 in the morning, if not later. We had auctions that didn’t get over till 5 o’clock in the morning.”
He recalled one auction of an estate from Ketchum that included a dozen or so rifles, which they saved until the end.
“By the time we got to that lot, it was 4 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “And I’ll tell you what, I guarantee there’s not a place in town that would have that crowd at that time of night. There’s probably 200 people standing here, half tired and groggy, and they were not screwing around. They were here to buy and that’s all there was to it. It was some of the best auctioning we’ve had.”
His fondest memory of the old barn, though, is from when he was 5 or 6 years old, and he was going to the auction one Saturday, knowing that he was going to go home with Uncle Danny afterward.
“It was really exciting … and we drove the old U‑Haul truck, and it was a really cool adventure,” he said. “And I got to spend the night at his house. I just remember I’d be up on his knee and we’d be auctioning stuff off.”
When he made the decision to sell the property, he was most nervous about telling his uncle, afraid of what he might think.
“The hard part was, when we got the official offer, I had to call my uncle,” Wesely said. “You know, he’d done it for 32 years, and I just, I didn’t know how he was going to take the news. And when I called him and told him, he’s like, ‘Well, it’s about damn time.’ He knew it was coming.”
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 put what everyone thought would be a temporary halt to live auctions, but they never came back. Wesely said they tried to do a live auction again, but the crowds just didn’t return.
So the Main Auction has been exclusively online ever since. People still bring their items to the barn, but the items are photographed and posted online for bidding. That will continue in the new location.
West Downtown Boise a hotbed of development
To some extent, the writing’s been on the wall for a while.
The area around Main Auction, West Downtown, is a hive of development activity. Once known as “dealership row,” the area is in transition.
College of Western Idaho is building a Boise campus just down the street, and other residential and commercial developments are planned or underway along the Fairview Avenue and Main Street corridor, near Whitewater Park Boulevard.
A couple of years ago, I wrote about Terry Botkin, who hung up his shears at another Boise icon, Boise Car Upholstery, at 23rd and Fairview, after that business had been around for 70 years.
Pacific Cos. is building a large community housing project on the site.
“The biggest issue here is the growth,” Wesely said. “And with CWI starting construction on their property, and who knows what’s going to happen over here on the other side of Main Street. We’re competing for parking spots as employees with our neighboring businesses, and it just makes more sense to move somewhere else.”
Going out with a bang
Longtime customers will have one final opportunity to say goodbye.
Main Auction is planning a final live auction on Saturday, May 16, just like old times — including a barbecue so you can get a hamburger, just like you used to at the Main Auction walk-through kitchen.
The celebration will be a nice goodbye for the customers, for sure, but just as much for David Wesely Jr., the employees and the whole family.
“I think by doing the live auction, that’s going to give us that feeling of closure that’s needed, and being able to bring the community in and sharing those memories with everybody is important,” Wesely said. “So I think when it’s all said and done, we’re going to be able to walk away knowing, ‘Hey, it was a good decision.’ ”
Scott McIntosh is the opinion editor of the Idaho Statesman. You can email him at smcintosh@idahostatesman.com or call him at 208-377-6202. Sign up for the free weekly email newsletter The Idaho Way.
This story was originally published April 10, 2026 at 4:00 AM.
