When I last sat down with University of Rhode Island President Dr. Robert L. Carothers – earlier this spring in his office on the school’s Kingston campus – we discussed a wide range of subjects.
Those subjects included ongoing capital projects, opportunities for the school to forge relationships with biotech companies, the relationship between URI and the state Legislature, Dr. Robert Ballard and his trip back to the Titanic and the rising cost of a college education.
But we also talked about some exciting ideas that are sort of being kicked around behind the scenes – long-term ideas that may or may not make sense for URI. One of them is the idea of creating a retirement village at URI, where alumni and staff might move, not only to be close to the school, but also to rekindle a love for the beauty of southern Rhode Island.
As Carothers pointed out, URI might be an ideal place for such a development.
“URI has always been cash poor and land rich,” he said. “One of the challenges here is to try and make that asset work more for us and produce more revenue.”
And that brings up other ideas that have, at least to some degree, been discussed in recent years.
“It brings up the perennial question of whether we can build a golf course down here and build a condominium community around it,” said Carothers. “All those could be revenue-producing activities for a university. Should we have a hotel down here? There is no question that South County needs a hotel – and we need a hotel. … So the challenge is to get to the place where we can manage this asset in a way that produces revenue and still protect the rural quality of our campus.”
I bring this up now because in just a couple of months, the University of Delaware will complete a $12 million development on a wooded site just north of its main campus – a Courtyard by Marriott. It will be a 126-room, four-story business-class hotel.
There are many colleges and universities around the country that have hotels on their campuses. But not so many operate them as the University of Delaware plans to – as a for-profit entity.
University of Delaware President David P. Roselle, in a recent article in the university’s daily newspaper, UDaily, said that students in the school’s department of hotel, restaurant and institutional management will be involved in opening and managing the hotel, “thus gaining rare, hands-on experience.”
In that same article, William Sullivan, a former DuPont Co. executive who will be managing director of the new hotel, said students will be “fully integrated into every aspect of running the hotel.”
Building a for-profit hotel at the University of Rhode Island may or may not make sense.
URI does not specialize in hotel management or restaurant operations, but one would imagine that students from its business school – whether they are marketers or accountants – would have a real interest in running a hotel. There is also a small, but traditionally strong landscape architecture program on the school’s Kingston campus. Students from that program could design the grounds surrounding such a project.
The economics of such a project – whether it is a viable economic generator – will ultimately hold the key to whether URI should even consider such an endeavor. What works in Delaware may or may not work here.
But there’s reason enough to keep a close eye on how things pan out there.
A follow-up to last week’s
Blue Cross column
The folks over at Blue Cross Blue Shield Rhode Island took exception to my column last week about the severance package the company reached with former President and Chief Executive Officer Ronald Battista.
Much of my column was based on a press release from Attorney General Patrick Lynch’s office, dated Aug. 11. In that release, the attorney general chided BCBSRI for not providing him with timely information regarding its agreement with Battista on his severance package.
In the release, Lynch said: “When I find out about these details in the newspaper, however, three months after I’ve been waiting to get them from Blue Cross and after Mr. Purcell (James Purcell, acting president and CEO at Blue Cross) himself has three times asked for more time, it only heightens my concerns about the way that Blue Cross conducts itself and the way in which it is regulated.”
I suggested that BCBSRI was wrong to be conducting business out of the public eye and chided them myself for not supplying information to the attorney general – and in turn, to the public at large – in a timely fashion.
But Scott Fraser, assistant vice president for public relations at Blue Cross, called and said that in fact the insurer had delivered information to the attorney general within hours of the agreement with Mr. Battista was reached.
And in reference to my assertion that the insurer was operating out of the public eye, he noted that Blue Cross on Aug. 6 distributed a news release to media outlets – after having sent materials to the attorney general.
Fraser raises a fair point.
In hindsight, it was unfair to suggest that the insurer was not operating in the public eye.
To be fair, Blue Cross, in negotiating a final settlement with Mr. Battista, had no obligation to air details of such discussions in public. When in fact there was news to report, Blue Cross did make information available.
As to whether the insurer should have been in closer contact with the attorney general during the process … that’s between Blue Cross and the AG.
