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NEW HOTEL COMING TO BRYAN
By JENNIFER MADDOX

" You’ve got a lot of your attractions that are marketed in this Bryan/College Station market that are actually located in Bryan, and they’ve really not had any type of hotel to service all of that business.”
- Hunter Goodwin

Casey Oldham, chairman and CEO of The Oldham Goodwin Group, LLC (TOGG), and Hunter Goodwin, executive vice president of hospitality at TOGG, recognized a need in the City of Bryan. They believe that Bryan should have a hotel to call its own. Between the emergence of downtown Bryan as an economic and technological hub, the construction of the Texas A&M University Health Science Center, and attractions such as Messina Hof Winery and the Texas Reds Festival, Bryan is bringing in a lot of visitors. Yet there hasn’t been a new hotel constructed in Bryan in the last twenty years.

“You’ve got a lot of your attractions that are marketed in this Bryan/College Station market that are actually located in Bryan, and they’ve really not had any type of hotel to service all of that business,” said Goodwin. “So we believe there’s a lot of existing business that’s already out there that can be serviced. There’s more to Bryan/College Station than exists on University Drive.”

Their answer to that need is the Traditions Inn & Suites by Best Western. But this isn’t your traditional Best Western. The hotel will be one of the hotel chain’s newest upper mid-scale prototypes: Atria™. The Atria Parallel prototype is a 5-story, 100-room, modular design featuring a pool, breakfast area, bar, business center, fitness facility, media center, board room, and meeting space. This model was chosen because its cutting edge technology and unique style fits well with the Bryan/College Station market. The guestrooms are designed around a loft concept with a frosted glass half-wall that separates sleeping areas from living areas and stone-topped vanities in the guest bathrooms. To cater to the business traveler, guestrooms include multi-functional bed lighting that creates an additional workspace for laptop users.

“There are only three of them currently in the nation, so we will be the fourth,” said Oldham.

Another need Oldham and Goodwin hope to fill with this property is the need for hotel meeting space. As Goodwin explained, a lot of businesses need space for more than 100 people, but between the 30,000 square feet that the Hilton provides and the smaller hotels that can only hold 50-60 people, there’s no middle ground. Traditions Inn & Suites will include 3,000 square feet of meeting space to fill that void.

Oldham and Goodwin selected the Best Western brand because they believe it to be a great product. Best Western International is the world’s largest hotel chain with 4,200 independently owned and operated member hotels in 80 countries and territories around the world.

“The unique thing about Best Western is that they give you a chance to brand the hotel,” said Goodwin. He explains that, while there are general concepts that developers are required to adhere to, there is enough flexibility to allow each hotel to have a look and feel of its own.

Traditions Inn & Suites by Best Western, developed by TekMak Development, will occupy one of the center lots of TOGG’s new Boonville Town Center, a new development near the corner of Boonville Road (FM 158) and State Highway Six.

“We want it to be Bryan’s hotel,” said Oldham. “We chose to be there, and we want [the city] to embrace it and support it. And we’ll do everything we can to give them a great experience.”