Sterett Reception Hall

The City of North Charleston should be ashamed of themselves for offering such a filthy reception hall. I recently booked Sterett Hall for my family banquet. I live in Chicago and was only able to rent the space based on discussion with staff and pictures online. I was completely horrified when I finally visited the site. Let me very clear… while I understand the building is very old, I expect it to be CLEAN! When first entering the building there is an old musty smell and dust and grime every where. The actual hall is upstairs and you have to pass through almost every part of the nasty building to get there. The hall has two window air conditioners that were loaded with dust and filth and the window treatments looked as it they had not been cleaned in years and I won’t even go into the condition of the bathrooms.
With no time to change locations, the reunion committee had to proceed with having an event at a location that looked as if it should have been abandoned. The city staff person assured us that the janitor (Jerome) would handle setup for our event but would not be available until 5pm (the event started at 7pm). The committee left and purchased cleaning supplies because we knew we would have to arrive early to prepare the location for our guests. The janitor would not be able to clean and set-​up in such a short period of time… so yes we ended up paying for a space that we had to clean.
We arrived at the location at 5pm and Jerome arrived at 5:30pm. Nothing was set up in the hall and Jerome also indicated that they did not have enough tables so he would have to pick some up from another location. I am just too tired and frustrated to express how things went from there, just know that overall it was truly the worst reunion experience ever! Our event did not start until after 8pm and our guests ended up cleaning and setting up the room. The lift that was used to take our physically challenged guests to the second floor looked questionable so many of them took a chance and used the stairs instead.
The reunion committee had to apologize to our family for the poor accommodations. The caterer we hired, Food for the Southern Soul, had the tastiest food ever so it helped take our guests’ minds off of the fact that we were in the middle of Ground Zero! At the end of the event, my family helped the janitor with cleaning trash, breaking down tables and chairs, which was such a very kind gesture. I was prepared to leave the hall exactly like I found it… filthy!