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Long-proposed hotel and conference center reaching completion A&M offers new facilities through public-private partnership By Anthony Pangonas @apangonas Opening next fall in time for the beginning of the 2018 football season, the Doug Pitcock ‘49 Hotel and Conference Center looks to provide visitors to Aggieland with a hotel a few feet away from Kyle Field and over 35,000 square feet of space for meetings and events. Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs Phillip Ray said through public-private partnerships (P3), the creation of the conference center became a reality without the university or system providing the funding. Ray traced the idea of a hotel and convention center back to before the current Texas A&M University system chancellor took office in 2011. “The hotel-conference center has a long history and it was before Chancellor [John] Sharp was with the system,” Ray said. “[Former University President] Bowen Loftin had expressed an interest in building a conference center on campus. He came to the chancellor at the time, [Michael McKinney], for money, but neither the university or system could fund the idea at that point.” Ray said after the Kyle Field reconstruction was completed, discussions of a hotel began again. The university came back around to the idea and it was pushed forward through the use of a P3. Used for almost 30 projects at A&M already, Ray said the idea of the P3 system consists of the university leasing the land where a project is being worked on to an outside developer. The developer then goes to get the funding for the project in conjunction with the university, and creates a project that meets the standards and expectations the university sets. The private company receives an amount of money designated by the deal made with the university and after the lease is up, the building ownership returns to A&M and the university can choose to stay with the company or change how they handle the project. The hotel portion of the facility was pro-
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The 250,000 square foot hotel and conference center is planned to feature retail space, food and drink options and more.
posed as a way to generate revenue for the conference center’s construction, Ray said. “We’ve had experience with [P3], and you’ve seen things like Century Square, U Centre at Northgate, Easterwood Airport,” Ray said. “We’ve done close to 30 of these now, but at the time we were exploring any opportunities to accommodate a need. So the thought came up that we need a revenue generator to pay for this because we don’t want to use any student fees, we don’t want to use any money that would originally go to the university. So the thought came up for a hotel.” According to Ray, the system has seen many misconceptions when it comes to funding for the new facility. Through the construction of the two buildings together, Ray said, the conference center can be funded with the revenue from the hotel and no funding
comes from the students or university itself. Other universities including Virginia Tech, UCLA and LSU also use this model, and Ray said the excess revenue goes directly back to the campus after the hotel is funded. Alex Cabanas, Class of 1998, is the CEO of Benchmark Hospitality, the company running the upcoming hotel and conference center. He said his company has been in talks with the university to act on the idea of the facility since the 1980s. “We started working with a past team and when I met with Phillip Ray, I had in my hands a typewritten letter, on Benchmark letterhead, from 1987 talking about a hotel and conference center on the campus,” Cabanas said. “We’ve been interested in doing this for a long time so it’s interesting to see it come to fruition.”
Cabanas said his company has worked on hotel and conference centers at college campuses across the nation with roughly the same product type, though each facility is unique for their particular university. “We’ve done a lot of hotels similar to this, so we understand what is needed for this,” Cabanas said. “This is going to be unique because I see this as being ‘the guesthouse’ of the university. We can’t be the living room of the university becuase that is taken [by the MSC], but we are the guesthouse and we look forward to hosting any and all constituents, alumni, students, parents, companies that are in the area that come to the university.” Laylan Copelin, vice chancellor of MarketHOTEL ON PG. 4
Female candidates hit record numbers in elections
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Approximately 20% of both the United States House of Representatives and Senate are made up of females.
Aggie professors discuss political landscape for female campaigns at both local and national level By Jordan Burnham @RJordanBurnham Women are set to run in 2018 elections in higher numbers than ever before, and the trend has surfaced both at the national level and at the local level in Texas. The recent primary elections in Texas have shown that record numbers of women have begun running for office. Why this trend has emerged is debatable, and whether female candidates will gain success against their male counterparts or unseat incumbents is worth analyzing. Currently in the United States Congress, women make up 22 percent of the Senate and 19 percent of the House of Representatives, according to the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics. In Texas, a similar number of women are represented, with a legislature composed of 20.4 percent females, according to data published by the National Conference of State Legislators. Associate professor of political science Diana O’Brien said the problem of female underrepresentation in U.S. politics comes in
two parts: supply and demand. “Research suggests that even the most qualified women are less likely to aspire to elected office, in part because they perceive themselves as less qualified and view qualifications as especially important,” O’Brien said. Women also face challenges when it comes to the desire of voters and party to support female candidates, according to O’Brien. “Work by Sarah Fulton, a political science professor here at A&M, suggests some voter bias against female candidates, which is primarily concentrated among independent male voters,” O’Brien said. Data published in an NPR article shows the number of women running for Congressional office has doubled since elections in 2016. Texas mirrors the national trend, as 50 women run for Congressional seats and 110 women for local office, according to an article published by Fortune. Female candidates are mobilizing for various reasons, but it does beg the question of whether the Trump administration has been a part of this response. Professor of political science Maria Escobar-Lemmon said there are several factors causing women to run. ELECTIONS ON PG. 2
“Research suggests that even the most qualified women are less likely to aspire to elected office, in part because they perceive themselves as less qualified and view qualifications as especially important.” Diana O’brien, associate professor