Hossein Kassaei
Nice place in downtown Montreal, with a couple of caveats. I recently organized an evet at Caucus and overall, I was happy with the experience. However there are a couple of things that can be improved. First the good things: Shawn was a great communicator and was quite prompt in answering emails. The location is quite nice and even though finding parking spots on the street in not easy, there are quite a few indoor parking spaces close by at reasonable cost. There is a nice bar at the corner of the room, which proved to be quite popular for our event :-) and there are enough chairs to seat around 20 people. This was enough for our group since our guests were mostly young and many were standing around chatting. There are two washrooms downstairs (you would need to take 7-8 stairs to go down), and again that was quite ok for our guests, but if you have older guests or guests with limited mobility, this needs to be taken into account. The kitchen was ok for our event since we didn't plan to server hot/warm food, but if you do, keep in mind there are no stoves or microwave ovens. Now the things that can be improved: There is an air conditioner, but it's certainly not strong enough for a hot summer evening (like the one we had) when there are around 30 people or more in the room. Shawn offered me to take a tour of the room a week before, which I did, and the room seemed comfortably cool, but it was impossible to imaging how it would feel once the room is full of people and if the weather outside is hot. So on the day of the event, unfortunately, almost all of our gusts felt uncomfortably hot. Such a nice place could've been much better equipped for Montreal summers. Finally, the pricing policy could be made more flexible, esp. for private events, when the host might not know exactly how long the event could last. The current policy says $200/hour or $1500/day, but if you reserve for say 6 hours and end up using the place for 9 hours, you will end up paying (6*200) plus an additional (3*200) for a total of $1800 which is more than a full day. This doesn't make much sense. Overall, I'd recommend this place for corporate or private parties of up to 40 people max, and when the weather is cool outside. Also, if you're not sure how long your party could last (including the time it takes to clean up), you're better off paying the $1500/day.
