Colette Fozard and Bill Lawhorn, chairs of DisCon III, the 2021 Worldcon, updated fans about the status of their facilities in the convention’s October newsletter [PDF file]:
As you can imagine, we have uncertainty related to the Coronavirus but planning and activities continue. The status of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel is unclear. Litigation between the owners was filed 2 September and settled at the end of September. At the start of October, Marriott filed a lawsuit against one of the entities that owns the hotel. What a mess! The hotel itself does not have an official statement at this time, and we are in close touch. Our Facilities team does have the room blocks for both the Marriott and the Omni Shoreham set up, and our current plan is to release those in January 2021.
In June, the Marriott Wardman Park hotel ownership notified the workers’ union of its intention to potentially close the hotel permanently. The facility has been shuttered since March due to the coronavirus outbreak.
According to the Wikipedia, (citing the Washington Business Journal article “Marriott sues Wardman Park hotel owner, alleging a lack of investment in the property”, behind a paywall):
On October 6, 2020, Marriott sued Pacific Life (which now owned 80% of the property) and JBG Smith (which owned 20%). Marriott claimed the two companies were intentionally failing to invest contractually obligated capital in the hotel, in order to force the property to close, so they could redevelop the land as a high-end residential property, even though Marriott had a contract to manage the hotel through 2029, followed by three automatic 10-year extensions.
So if DisCon III can’t use the Marriott, they presently have space reserved in the nearby Omni Shoreham.
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Call me pessimistic, but I would be very surprised if large in-person conventions can be hosted in the US by next August.
PS: For the last couple of weeks, I’ve stopped receiving confirmation mails for follow-up notifications when I tick the box. Do others have this issue as well?
I’m still getting notifications.
@microtherion–It’s quite likely that you are now subscribed to more posts than WordPress is willing to recognize, and most of them are old and inactive now, not getting any new comments. The thing to do is to start unsubscribing from the oldest ones–as many as you have the patience for. Then come back later and unsubscribe from more. When you’ve unsubscribed from enough, you’ll start actually getting notifications on new posts you’ve subscribed to again.
I would hope that third quarter conventions would be held but I would be surprised if Westercon would be held, for example. My friend who goes with me to conventions has several co-morbidities so we would probably opt out unless there is a good vaccine out.
@microtherion
Also, if you click on the link “subscription options” on the bottom of one of your emails, you’re taken to the “Blogs I Follow” page on WordPress. On the left is a link for “sites” and you can follow the site as opposed to individual posts on that site. (I don’t remember if you need a WordPress account to do this. You might.)
microtherion, go to https://wordpress.com and sign in with your File770 posting nym/e-mail and password. Next to “Followed Sites”, click “Manage”.
(Or you can just go to the URL https://wordpress.com/following/manage )
Find “File 770” in the list. To the right of it, click “Settings”. You can turn on “e-mail me all Posts” and “e-mail me all Comments” here.
(On at least one occasion, Comments were on, but I wasn’t getting them; I found that toggling them off and then on again reset the functionality.)
You may also find it helpful to go to
https://subscribe.wordpress.com/?option=comments
and delete individual subscriptions to really old comment threads. If you click the tickbox to the left of “SITE”, it will select everything on the page; you can un-tick any you want to keep, then click the “Bulk Actions” dropdown to “Unfollow”.
It’s just a click to the left / Then Godstalk to the right
Let’s do the comment warp again!
Thanks for your advice, everyone! I’ll see whether that helps, although I was not subscribed to a super high number of stories.
@Mike Glyer: ROFLMAO, thanks 🙂 . . . . Those sound suspiciously like Pixel Scroll titles, BTW. “Editor of the Day: Mike Glyer. It had to happen.”