The Work Of August

Well here it is September 1st and of course the hot weather is here. I don't know why I always expect the heat to come in August.

I worked my ass off at my studio. I changed the name, got a new logo, ordered new shirts, banners, promo materials etc. With big time help from em, eduardo and a bunch of our homeschool friends and students we re-habbed the place. New paint, floor, ceiling tiles, mirror, reception desk etc. The place looks great!

Then I finally hear from a manager of the property; one I can understand well because he doesn't have a thick Asian accent. He starts telling me about the big improvements the new owners of the building are planning. He says that I can expect a rent increase but can't tell me even a ballpark figure what it might be. He says I'm lucky and that he doesn't think that they have anyone at this point ready to take my space. He asked whether I have been looking into other spaces. He's asking what I'd be comfortable with in the way of rent increase. He says if I have to leave they would find me another space.

I only answered a few of his questions and only with info he could get if he looked at our website or class schedule. As far as looking for another place, I told him that I had let the new owners know by email (the only form of communication they recommended besides fax) that I wanted to know what their plans were because I was planing to make some improvements to the place and when I didn't hear from them after repeated tries and when the hard to understand manager was asked anything his only answer was "I don't know" I decided to go ahead and put in the time, effort and expense of the changes. So of course I hadn't looked into other spaces! This school has been at this location for nearly 12 years!

Anyway, this has taken the wind out of my sails. I'm cleaning up the mess of the improvements and trying to organize everything into the new shelving that I purchased but it's hard to continue with the same enthusiasm when things are so up in the air as to how large a price increase or even if I'll have the option to stay at all.

I took some time in the last couple of days looking at some possible other locations. I guess I'll leave this to the universe a bit. I might find a better location with some other shops that might draw some possible students my way. One place is next to a Baskin Robbins and movie theater and another is a brand new complex near a huge aerospace company and has a Subway and Starbucks going in soon.

The manager guy promised to get back to me on Tuesday to give me some more information. I'm not holding my breath though. This new company has already proven to be pretty unresponsive.