Construction of Controversial Campus Hotel Continues
In what used to be a forested area next to the Administration building and behind Humanities on Stony Brook University campus, 3.7 acres of 11 have been clear-cut in order to make space for a new campus hotel. Construction workers have completed the concrete footings and foundation walls for the structure, which is due to be completed in Fall 2012, according to Helen Carrano, director of community relations at Stony Brook.
Robert Frey, the alumnus who owns SBHC Private Equity IV, LLC—the local company behind construction and operation costs for the hotel—said that he expects the five-story, 135-room hotel to cost about $25 million by the time it has been completed. The management company, Crescent Hotels and Resorts, LLC, will be running the establishment under Hilton’s Garden Inn franchise.
It will not be a full-service hotel, he said—no room service—but it will have a spa, pool and restaurant. Frey said that rates will be around $100 to $165 a night, but may fluctuate in order to be competitive with other hotels in the area. A hotel consultant conducted a study that placed the campus inn’s expected occupancy rate for its first year at 65 to 70 percent.
When built, Frey said, he expects athletic teams from other schools, scientists attending conferences at Stony Brook, parents visiting students, and families of patients staying at the University Medical Center to use the hotel. “It’ll be a nice place to stay, and affordable.”
University President Samuel Stanley said in a statement that the Stony Brook University administration has been considering a campus hotel for over 20 years.
According to Frey, the university owns an equity portion of the hotel. It receives lease payments for the land “with annual escalations and additional payments based on operating performance,” he said. The university is essentially both the landlord and primary customer of the hotel and, Frey said, “the operator has a strong motivation to be cooperative.”
The hotel will be LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), or built to a set of efficiency standards. “It’s basically a checklist that you go down,” Frey said. “The equipment has to be at a certain level, the heating and cooling systems are set up so they don’t use excess energy.”
The temperature control systems, for instance, will be networked back to the front desk. When someone leaves the room, the front desk will be able to tell when it is empty and remotely shut the air conditioner or heat off.
James O’Connor, director of transportation and parking operations, said that the hotel will not require a new bus route—clients staying there will be using the Administration building’s bus stop. But depending on traffic, he said, transportation and parking operations may readjust bus schedules in order to accommodate the extra traffic.
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing, and there are obstacles still on the way—in December of 2009, Michelle Pizer, former president of the Stony Brook Environmental Club, and a local resident, Murial Weyl, filed a lawsuit against SUNY to try and block construction of the hotel. Their main objection was not the presence of a hotel on campus, but its location at the university’s West Campus main entrance.
The plaintiffs also referred to legislation that required the state comptroller and attorney general to approve a lease by 1990, which did not happen.
Malcolm Bowman, faculty advisor to the environmental club and professor at Stony Brook, wrote in an e-mail that there were plenty of places President Samuel Stanley could have chosen as a site for the hotel, but that instead the president “would not consider any” other alternative even though “Senator Ken LaValle thought it would be a simple matter to move the ground lease.”
Frey said that the chosen site was the only one offered to SBHC.
The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan in 2009 according to attorney George Locker because it would be out of the university’s range of influence. New York State Supreme Court Judge Marylin Diamond ordered a change of venue to Suffolk County at the request of then-State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. On Oct. 7, 2010, Susan Connolly, an assistant attorney general who represented the university, had reached an agreement to place a temporary restraining order on cutting trees.
On Oct. 29 of that same year, judge Ralph T. Gazillo lifted the restraining order and construction progressed on the campus hotel. Bowman wrote that the judge “dismissed the case before it began on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing.”
The plaintiffs have filed an appeal in the New York Court of Appeals in Brooklyn on the basis that all citizen taxpayers have standing where alienation of state land—the capacity for a piece of state-owned land to be sold—is concerned.
By Aug. 2011, construction workers had already cleared some trees for the lot behind the Administration building. By November, the initial phase of construction had been completed.
