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What happened to our original Hotel ?

On June 18, 2003 the Albacon Hotel Liaison and Chair were notified that our original hotel for this year, and home to Albacon since 1997, was not going to be available for this year. The Schenectady Ramada Hotel and Conference Center's owners had been trying to sell the property for a few years. The primary target buyer was Union College, located a few blocks from the Ramada. This summer, they succeeded. Part of the purchase arrangement includes a multi-million dollar renovation. The Ramada is closing Sept. 2, 2003 until Jan. 15, 2004 for the renovations. This left us with nowhere to hold Albacon with only four months until the convention.

The Albacon Chair (Jen Sternfeld) and Hotel Liaison (Jon Sternfeld) immediately notified the committee via the Albacon Committee email list. We debated our options; cancel Albacon 2003, move it to another date, move it to another facility, etc. It was decided to stay on Columbus Day weekend and try to find a facility that had both the function space we need and sufficient rooms available. Jen and Jon started calling hotels, conference centers, and various visitors and convention bureaus. They found three facilities that could accomodate us. A team of committee members visited all three within about a one week period.

One was a small motel very close to Albany, NY. It had function space that we could hold a reduced Albacon at, but the quality of the guest rooms was very poor, on a par with those we had for Albacon 1996. We deemed those unacceptable.

The other two facilties we found were both resorts. One is the Roaring Brook Resort located about an hour north of Albany in Lake George, the other was about an hour south of Albany in the Catskills. We spent about two to three weeks negotiating with both resorts, each had their own pros and cons, and we weighed these advantages and disadvantages against each other and against the rates we were quoted (and negotiated a fair bit down from). When all was said and done, Roaring Brook gave us what we felt was the best combination of facilities, proximity to other food and attractions, and cost. As a side note, both resorts are 'all inclusive' with meals usually included in the room rate, both also quoted us room only rates, but with other implications.

So, this is how we got from the Ramada in Schenectady to the Roaring Brook in Lake George in about six weeks.

This page last updated on Tuesday, August 12, 2003 at 10:25:32 PM.