Magazine Preview: We Want It, But Not Here

in Campus Headline by THiNK Staff — December 4, 2009 at 1:17 pm | 1 comment

When Stony Brook University President Samuel Stanley announced at a university senate meeting on October 5 that plans for an on-campus hotel would be moving forward, he became just the latest champion of an issue that has already outlived two lengthy administrations before his own.

Most of the controversy and complications associated with the hotel can be traced back to the fact that Stony Brook is a public university, and is therefore subject to any number of state regulations and restrictions.

John H Marburger, Stony Brook University’s president from 1980 to 1994, was the first to suggest a hotel be built within the boundaries of the university.

“I started the whole thing and I worked with the Stony Brook Foundation,” he said. “They established a realty sub-unit to deal with this.”

The establishment of Stony Brook Foundation Realty Inc in 1979 and its activation in 1987 was solely for the purposes of, in the words of the Stony Brook Foundation, “facilitating the development and operation of a conference center/hotel on the Stony Brook University campus.”

Now, almost a quarter century later, plans have been drawn up to construct a five story, 135-bedroom hotel on a 13-acre plot of land by the main entrance of the university, complete with a 5,000 square foot conference center, indoor pool, exercise facility and restaurant. The only point of access to the hotel will be off of Circle Road, across the street from the Administration building parking garage.

The hotel will be operated and managed by a private corporation. Hilton Garden Inn, a subsidiary of Hilton Worldwide, is currently the front-runner in ongoing negotiations, but a final decision has yet to be made.

The construction project has been contracted to Harbor Construction Management, an affiliate of Harbor Financial Management based in nearby Port Jefferson. Its CEO Robert Frey is a research professor at Stony Brook and a trustee of the Stony Brook Foundation, which is footing the bill (through their realty affiliate) for construction of the hotel.

The design of the building and its surroundings has yet to be finalized, but Frey says that it will likely fit in with the campus décor.

“In terms of design, the general target is the Humanities building,” he said, referring to the brick structure nearby.

Marburger is also unconcerned about a corporate building interfering with the aesthetics of a university as large as Stony Brook.

““I’m not too worried about the intrusiveness onto the architecture or the traffic of the campus,” he said.

Harbor Construction Management will ultimately be taking orders from the Foundation, which will have “final authority” according to Frey.

Once the building is completed, Stony Brook Foundation Realty Inc will turn the property over to a private hotel manager and operator. SBFR is in final discussions with Hilton Garden Inn to manage the hotel, according to Hilton Garden Inn spokeswoman Dawn Ray.

Those discussions may take longer than expected because both SBFR and Hilton are in uncharted territory.

According to Ray and Scott Carman, spokesman for Hilton Worldwide, a hotel built within the boundaries of a university would be a rare move for the company.

“I don’t know of any instances,” said Ray, speaking about Hilton managing hotels on college campuses. “None come to mind,” added Carman.

For Stony Brook as well, there is little precedent to look to. No other SUNY school has an on-campus hotel, with the exception of Cornell’s School of Hotel Management, which runs its hotel internally and uses it for educational purposes.

In order for Hilton or any other corporation to be granted access to the campus—which, as a state school, is public property—Stony Brook Foundation Realty Inc had to acquire a ground lease from the State University of New York and New York State, which it did in 1990 using $450,000 provided by the Stony Brook Foundation.

In turn, the operators of the hotel will pay an annual six-figure lease payment with a 3% hike annually to SBFR. The purpose of the hotel, however, is not to make money, says Marburger.

“It probably won’t make money. Let’s hope it breaks even,” he said.

Frey echoed the sentiment, saying that SBFR would probably be saddled with some costs.

“They would probably incur some costs, like inspections,” he said.

But the biggest concerns about the hotel have nothing to do with the financial implications of a private corporation operating at a public university. Instead, students, faculty, community members and even local legislators are concerned about the aesthetic and environmental impact that the hotel could potentially have.

The Stony Brook Environmental Conservancy, an organization with no formal ties to the university, has begun a campaign to dissuade the university from building a hotel—or any other structure—on the land currently allocated for the project.

“Our position is that SBEC supports a genuine campus conference facility with commensurate accommodations; but we are adamantly against the construction of a commercial hotel on state land at the campus entrance,” said SBEC President Malcolm Bowman in a letter sent to supporters. Bowman is a Distinguished Service Professor at the university’s Marine Sciences Research Center.

The SBEC is encouraging its members to look into irregularities in the ground lease, possible conflicts of interest and a lack of a State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) as grounds for impeding the construction of the hotel.

“A great university has a responsibility to set an example as a protector of environmental quality,” said Charles Wurster, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences and a founder of the Environmental Defense Fund. “Any more deforestation is too much. Stony Brook must protect in perpetuity its remaining forests.”

“Every effort should be made to preserve the remaining green spaces on this campus,” said Godlind Johnson, the head of the Science & Engineering Library on campus.

For its part, Harbor Construction Management will have an eye on energy efficiency during the construction.

“It will be LEED certified,” said Frey. LEED certification is the industry standard for measuring the environmental friendliness of construction projects.

That guarantee has not quieted calls for the university to find alternative locations to the hotel. In letters penned to President Stanley and local newspapers, community members offer up dozens of other locations on campus, some more feasable than others. One person, Michael Meltzer, even went so far as to suggest that the hotel replace LaValle Stadium, which he describes as “ridiculous, unnecessary [and] overly-lit.”

Steve Fiore-Rosenfeld, who represents Stony Brook University and the surrounding community on the Brookhaven Town Council, suggested a few alternative locations as well in a letter to President Stanley.

On land near the hospital, on land near the South P lot, and north of the Wang Center, near Mendelssohn Quad were just three suggestions put forth by Fiore-Rosenfeld.

Perhaps the most interesting suggestion, however, centers on the Student Union. Fiore-Rosenfeld joins a number of faculty and community members who call for the Student Union building to be replaced entirely with a new multi-story building that would feature a hotel, shops, restaurants and, as now, offices for student organizations.

“This site would be a better fit for both on-campus activity and off-campus concerns,” said Fiore-Rosenfeld.

But Marburger argues that the current location is the only truly viable option.

“There’s a reason for it being where it is. It has to be close to a main road, otherwise you can’t make it work,” he said.

“It would be difficult to get financing for it if you couldn’t more or less guarantee a certain occupancy rate,” he added. Exposure to a main road, in this case Nichols Road, would help offset the fact that the university would likely only be able to provide the hotel with consistent business eight months out of the year, when classes are in session.

Exposure to Nichols Road is the exact thing that other community members fear.

“The university has an obligation to be sensitive to the confines of the property and the aesthetics of the property,” said State Senator John Flanagan, who represents the university and the surrounding community in Albany.

To date, the university has upheld a long-standing commitment with the community to maintain a buffer between Nichols Road and the campus. Members of the community fear that the construction of the hotel within this buffer of trees will violate that commitment.

“The deciduous trees that will be planted will not provide a sufficient screen for six months of the year,” said Muriel Weyl, a Stony Brook community member for 42 years.

“The green strip on both sides of Nichols Road is a very important and irreplaceable aesthetic asset,” said Carl Safina, President of the Blue Ocean Institute and a faculty member in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. “It would be our shame to violate this lovely campus greenbelt, especially for a commercial building.”

Despite the expressed concerns by community members and lawmakers, the university has shown no signs of slowing down their plans. It will likely take significantly more pressure by students, faculty and community members to derail the proposal.

Pressure may be something Charles Perretti is willing to provide. He is the father of a student in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and he’s prepared to stop construction on the site at all costs.

“I am even willing to lay my body down in front of the pay loaders,” he said.