Lake Effect

This review is regarding my experience with setting up an event. I have been planning an out of state work event per my Chief for March 26th. To my understanding, this restaurant only has one designated manager for Events. I sent an email inquiry on January 17th and received a response two days later (more than reasonable). We were very interested in the space aesthetic, menu, and proximity it was to the convention center. Unfortunately, there is a little bit of a process as we have to go through our Accounting and Legal departments. The approval took longer than expected. Never the less, I tried to keep the Events manager informed as much as I could with any updates I had. Unbeknownst to me, our Director of Finance had gotten the approval mid-February and had been attempting to contact the restaurant numerous times as well as the Events manager. She was unsuccessful as no one answers the phone (which has also been the case for myself on multiple occasions despite calling within the earlier part of their business hours). Two weeks from our event, I made multiple attempts to contact her. I also figured that if there was another party that had been booked, she would have at least responded and let us know that there was no longer any availability, which would be understandable. This was not the case. She did not respond to any of the emails we had been sending up to Thursday 3/21 which left us in a tough spot as the event was only a few days away. We had to scramble to find another place to accommodate our party of 25-30 attendees. The Events manager eventually responded over the weekend on Saturday 3/23 simply stating that they had limited availability for our date and that she just had another event cancel. Thankfully, we had been able to secure another location and got the contracts in place on Friday. If we had continued to wait until the Events manager decided to reply, there would not have been an event. I just want to say that this was a very poor and unprofessional experience, especially when trying to coordinate everything from out of state on the East Coast. I understand that she is only one person (as am I in my role) however, it should not take multiple emails and calls over the span of two weeks to get a hold of someone to get a reply. If the manager is out of the office or unavailable, then people should be notified about this as well or at least have another person covering (assuming this could be the case as well). This truly put us in a difficult position in the very few days leading up to our mixer because this person failed to simply give us the common courtesy of letting us know ahead of time that there was no longer any availability. We would have had more time to look into other options. This was completely unacceptable. The disappointing part is that this venue along with its menu look amazing! It's this experience that has made it not so pleasant and speaks volumes to how things are coordinated here. You will waste your time in pure frustration just trying to get a hold of anyone. The events portion really needs improvement. Unfortunately, I do not and will not be recommending this place for any future events whenever our executive staff travels to Salt Lake City. I am not confident that the encounter would be different.