Back in this message and this message, we wrote about the Sportsmen's Lodge, a once-popular complex out in Studio City that had a coffee shop, a hotel and dozens of different buildings and outdoor areas where you could hold a meeting, a party, a memorial service, a Bar Mitzvah reception, a wedding…whatever. The food was never that great, the facilities were never that fancy, the service was never that swift…but if you needed to hold one of the aforementioned events, it was sometimes your only option. A friend of mine who held a series of conferences there once told me a story that went roughly like this…
I got fed up with the bad food and bad service and I finally told them, "We're moving to another place." This did not upset the Sportsmen's Lodge staffer I was dealing with. She shrugged and said, "You'll be back." And a few months later, we were.
As the previous links show, there have been talks for the last few years of either ripping some of the place down and building a big shopping center or tearing it all down and building a bigger shopping center. The plans were on, then they were off, then they were on, then they were modified, then they were announced as far in the future, then the date was moved back…
Well, it's starting to look something's final now that they've started tearing down buildings. I'm not sure if I'll miss the place. It may depend on what they build in its place. But I do know an awful lot of receptions and meetings are going to have a hard time finding a new place to happen.