Our experience with this venue was extremely disappointing and stressful. We booked the venue and…read morecoordinated our music competition with them weeks in advance. We put a significant amount of time, money, and effort into preparing for the event, including organizing artists, staff, production, tickets, and attendees.
From the beginning, we felt like the venue was looking for reasons to remove us. On the day of the event, before the competition had even started, we experienced repeated confrontations from staff while I was trying to manage the event and make sure everything was running properly. I was followed around and repeatedly approached instead of being given the opportunity to address concerns calmly and professionally.
There were also multiple threats to cancel the event over issues that we believed were minor and could have been easily resolved through communication. Rather than working with us to find solutions, the situation continued to escalate. We felt pressured and intimidated throughout the process, and it became increasingly clear that the venue wanted us out despite the fact that we had booked the space and coordinated the event with them weeks beforehand.
The situation became even more concerning when issues involving our predominantly Black group of participants arose. From our perspective, the way the situation was handled made us feel that our participants were being treated unfairly because of their race. We cannot speak to the intentions of every individual involved, but the experience left us deeply concerned about how our artists and guests were treated.
What made this especially frustrating is that we had a full event prepared. People had already purchased tickets, attendees had traveled to the venue, and artists had prepared their performances and were there ready to showcase their talents. Our team had spent weeks preparing everything, only for the event to be stopped before the competition could properly begin.
This was an extremely stressful situation for everyone involved. We had to deal with disappointed ticket holders, artists who were ready to perform, guests who had already arrived, and the financial and organizational consequences of an event being stopped at the last minute.
We understand that venues have rules and responsibilities, and we are always willing to address legitimate concerns. However, concerns should be handled through clear communication and reasonable solutions, especially when an event has been planned and coordinated weeks in advance.
Unfortunately, that was not our experience. We left feeling that our team was not treated with professionalism or respect, and the way the situation was handled caused significant stress and disappointment for our organizers, artists, and attendees. Based on our experience, we would strongly encourage other event organizers to make sure every expectation, rule, and procedure is clearly documented with the venue before booking.
