Graduation brings business to local venues

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Graduation means the busiest weekend of the year for many businesses in Lawrence. Restaurants, bars, hotels and park shelter are nearly all booked in anticipation of the weekend of May 14-16.

Tim Laurent, facilities operations supervisor for the City of Lawrence, said the 13 city-owned park shelters are all reserved for graduation weekend. 41 events are scheduled at the different shelters, almost all of which are graduation parties.

“Graduation weekend is by far the number one weekend of the year,” Laurent said. “Other than that it’s hit and miss.”

Many of the shelters were booked in February, March and April, but some were booked as far back as November. Still, people continue calling to try to schedule events for graduation weekend.

“We’ve had to tell a lot of people that there’s no space available,” Laurent said.

Alex Murnan, a senior from Pittsburg, was trying to book a shelter for her friend’s surprise graduation party when she found out there was no space available. She said she thought calling four months ahead would have been plenty of time.

“When I called the city parks and recreation department and told them that’s what I wanted to do, the lady laughed at me,” Murnan said. “She told me she would look but that park shelters for graduation weekend had been booked for months.”

And it’s not just park shelters that are booked.

“All of our hotels are sold out,” said Patti McCormick, director of media for the Olivia Collection, which owns The Oread, The Eldridge and The Eldridge Extended hotels.

Nancy Longhurst, general manager for the hotels, said The Oread and The Eldridge usually have several graduation parties per night over the three-day weekend. Longhurst said the three hotels are also completely booked the weekends before and after graduation.

The Eldridge Hotel and Eldridge Extended have three party rooms, while The Oread has seven rooms as well as a 5th floor terrace. She said rooms for graduation weekends were booked a year in advance.

Besides being a busy time of year for hotels, local restaurants are also seeing the effects of graduation weekend.

“That’s our biggest weekend of the year,” said Elwood Schaad, a waiter at Pachamams.

Despite being booked on Saturday and nearly booked on Sunday, Schaad said they still receive three to five calls a day asking about reservations for graduation weekend.

Alex Hamilton, restaurant manager at Free State Brewery, said the restaurant was still frequently receiving calls as well. Hamilton said graduation weekend was one of the busiest weekends of the year for Free State. Some of their rooms are already booked for the entire weekend, with reservations scheduled a year in advance.

Rosie Robertson, assistant manager at Abe and Jake’s Landing, said they will be completely full the Saturday before graduation. She said the rest of the weekend also had events booked, but that making accommodations was still possible.

— Edited by Michael Holtz

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