Curtis Ballroom At The Landmark

WARNING – Stressful. Make sure elevator works. Owner did not properly communicate. Background: on July 5, 2024 we had the rehearsal dinner/welcome party at the Curtis Ballroom for our son/future daughter-in-law in which 90% of the guests traveled from out of town. We planned an intimate dinner for 40 people of the wedding party from 5-7pm and then 85 more people/wedding guests would join a welcome party afterwards from 7-10pm for dessert/drinks. We looked forward to having both private events on the third floor Curtis Ballroom with its gorgeous rooftop terrace. Working with Brianna, Director of Events was wonderful. On July 2nd, I went to the Curtis Ballroom to make sure things were ready to go. I was told that the elevator was broken and we’d have to climb the multiple levels of stairs and go through the fire emergency exit. I was highly concerned but reassured that it would be fixed by Friday. I reminded them that my wheelchair bound brother would be at the event and we had elderly people joining who were not accustomed to Denver’s altitude. I stressed that the elevator working was critical to our event and necessary for our guests. HOWEVER, on July 5th at 12:30pm (less than 5 hours before our event), I received a phone call that the elevator would not be working at all because the needed replacement part could not be secured for 8-10 weeks out. I was asked to authorize moving the dinner to the second floor and authorize moving the welcome party to the main floor. The main floor is an open area for guests who eat/drink before going into Comedy Works show. There was a popular comedy show scheduled for the evening of July 5th so that area was already being utilized. I immediately dropped what I was doing and went to the venue to visualize the options. I had about 10 minutes to make a decision. I realized that by moving the event downstairs we would lose the rooftop terrace and the privacy. I decided to keep the elegance/tone of the private event and keep everything on the third floor. My handicapped brother was unable to attend, elderly family members felt ill after climbing the many stairs, along with all of our guests being uncomfortable with the hike up the stairs. For me the event was extremely stressful and not at all what we expected. The week following the event, I emailed Brianna to ask for the owner’s contact info as I felt she was left to execute poor management choices. I explained that waiting until the last minute to communicate the elevator failure was not acceptable and I wanted to make sure other families didn’t have their special events marred. Instead, I received an email offering a 20% discount for the “inconvenience of the elevator malfunction on our special event”. My issue was never that the elevator broke but that they knew it was broken and failed to communicate this in a timely manner. I have since exchanged emails with the owner who I feel has still not taken responsibility for poor communication. We are currently disputing the charges with our credit card company. I asked the owner to call me so we could resolve and instead she responded with another defensive email. We are not wanting to be unreasonable but a contingency plan with more than five hours notice should have occurred. I feel that a decision was made to wait until the last minute so I could not move the entire event elsewhere. For this reason we believe a 50% discount is reasonable. This was not a corporate event or a small group being moved it was 115 people for a special, private event being asked to move to a public location at the last minute when prior notice was possible.