Let's get this out of the way right at the start: This blog has nothing to do with the current state of the hotel industry.
I spent a little time thinking about how to try to shoehorn what I wanted to write about into some sort of analogy about current performance or operations or guest relations or whatever else, but I came up blank. So no hotel talk today.
But what I do want to talk about is how as I sit here to write this, this is the absolute last thing I'll write while sitting in the Lakewood, Ohio, offices HNN has inhabited since mid-2017 — minus a chunk where we were all stuck at home. Our building, right on the corner of Detroit Avenue and St. Charles Avenue, was at no point in our time here what I'd describe as "nice," but our space within it definitely was. I remember when we first moved from our old, much more fragmented space in nearby Rocky River, Ohio, this new space gave us the promise of greater collaboration among our staff with the creation of the first ever true newsroom setting for Hotel News Now.
I hope those of you readers who have stuck with us since before that period have noticed some sort of difference or improvement that stems from that. It was my goal to make HNN operate with a more openly collaborative environment, and I feel like we achieved that.
Sadly, our building — much like a lot of aging office space — can't exist in the format it's currently in, and is soon fated to be some format of luxury condos or apartments, and this space will be thoroughly gutted en route to making that a reality.
But I will miss it. I'll miss our big, open newsroom space where Stephanie Ricca, Bryan Wroten and I would loudly shout our opinions about both work-related and non-work-related thing at each other as Dana Miller and Trevor Simpson — and Danielle Hess before him — did their best to tolerate us. I'll miss the kitchen/break room space where we would go through phases of getting way, way too invested in various phases — particularly the ominously named board game Secret Hitler and pleasantly chill Netflix reality show Terrace House.
I'll miss our impressively large conference room, where Terence Baker would loom over us during meetings like the floating head of Jor-El in the Fortress of Solitude, except he was on a 90-inch screen instead of a projected-by-some-weird-alien crystal tech. I'll also miss the walls filled with white boards in that room that were filled in turn by chaotic mashes of story ideas, some better fleshed out than others.
I won't miss the shockingly tiny windows in this place. They're both small and sparse, giving the building an almost prison-like look from the outside and its inhabitants — especially us newsroom denizens who aren't particularly close to any of them — likely leading to vitamin D deficiencies.
Starting on Monday, HNN will be occupying a new space in downtown Cleveland, closer to our CoStar colleagues.
Perhaps not coincidentally, I was or will be absent for the first day in both this office and our new space. Last time I was on the road to cover Meet the Money in Los Angeles. This time, I'm on the road to cover HITEC and HSMAI's conferences in Toronto. But I'm thankful for my pioneering colleagues who will figure out the logistics of the new space in real time, so I can comfortably parachute in a week later after all the wrinkles have been ironed out.
Let me know what you think on Twitter, LinkedIn or via email.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.