|
In need of a new home for its growing student population, the School of Hospitality Administration embarked on a campaign to fund the complete renovation of the three-story building at 928 Commonwealth Avenue, directly across the street from the University's John Hancock Student Village. Now, having raised $2.9 million toward a $4 million goal, the school is scheduled to move there in September 2006.
Among important advances the building will provide will be the library on the first floor. For the first time, SHA students and faculty will have needed print and electronic resources at their fingertips.
The friend who is making the library's naming gift-Caribbean hotelier Hugh Andrews-is doing so in memory of SHA's founding program director, Harold E. Lane. The two met when Andrews, a recently returned Vietnam vet, was earning an M.B.A. at his alma mater, Michigan State University. Lane, a former executive with the Sheraton Corporation, became his teacher and then his mentor, guiding his entree into the hotel business. At a time when 80 percent of hotels were privately owned and chains were just emerging, Andrews says, "Harold led me through a minefield," encouraging him to join a new company called Hyatt with the advice, "You'll be riding the escalator." Andrews would open five corporate hotels for Hyatt in the U.S. as prelude to his next move-to Puerto Rico in 1976.
His career ascent speeded up. He set out to revive the bankrupt two-star Condado Hotel in San Juan, for which he would receive ownership equity. Andrews's strategy-to create a product for business travelers, then an untapped market in Puerto Rico-transformed the Condado into a highly profitable four-star hotel, renamed the Condado Plaza Hotel and Casino and now the Wyndham Condado Plaza.
In fact, Andrews has never met a failed hotel he couldn't turn into a flourishing venture. He sees the potential in older hotels, which often have the best locations, then rebuilds and repositions them. The Condado success seeded many others: hotel purchases, redevelopments and restorations, and sales. With each project, he focuses on a particular market, cooperating with the community and government to create properties that respect the local culture and environment. Over the years, he has constructed some 3,000 hotel "keys" and, conservatively, 6,000 jobs, contributing greatly to the growth of Puerto Rico's tourism industry. In 1996 he founded his own company, International Hospitality Enterprises.
One current project is perhaps his most ambitious-the redevelopment of two large hotels, the old Condado Vanderbilt and La Concha, with a projected opening in stages from late 2006 to early 2007. The hotels are being developed differently: the former restored to its early twentieth-century grandeur; the latter, named for its shell-shaped ceiling, renovated into a contemporary four-star hotel with tropical ambiance, to be operated by Marriott Renaissance. Each will also have condo-hotel towers, individually owned by investors. A five-acre waterfront park between the hotels, dubbed Window to the Sea, will provide community space.
With a builder's vision and a friend's commitment, Andrews is enthusiastic at the prospect of SHA's new space and believes the school's "opportunities are
limitless."
—Jean Hennelly Keith
|
