After visiting the Peter B. Lewis building, you might think that touring another triumph to corporate advancement would be anticlimactic. Not if you're visiting the recently opened LaCentre in Westlake. It took owner/developer Bob Lontkowski four years to conceptualize and craft the unique, technological infused conference and banquet center. With 5-star decor and design, this conference multiplex is a technological wonder, similar to CWRU's PBL building or something you'd find in Silicon Valley. Its gigabit network has 200 ports around the first floor allowing you to plug in anywhere to Ciso AVVID platform, fueled by an OC-192 connection to the internet.

As Geof Pelia, the center's creative director translates that into English, it means doing business circa 2010, and you can forget about your grandfather's tradeshows and conferences. Slightly less then 2000 people will fit comfortably on the first floor, which was designed to be laid out in a standard convention center sized booth. So you're expecting a crowd that exceeds this but are too busy to travel? No matter. This high-tech/high-touch facility has all of the means to produce and broadcast your event over ANY medium. They recently hosted the wedding of an Indian couple, and comfortably delighted non-attending New Delhi relatives with a real-time webcast of the event. The building is conveniently located off of Route 90 and about 10 minutes away from Hopkins. As assets like this start to proliferate the region, with their ability to outperform pre-information age relics, they certainly raise provocative questions about the future of convening knowledge workers as we move briskly from the brick-and-mortar age to the information evolution.

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