When Karalyn Martin at Hasbro Inc. needed a place for a Nerf-gun war between executives at the Pawtucket toy company, the administrative assistant turned to the University of Rhode Island W. Alton Jones Whispering Pines Conference Center and its grassy fields and rustic lodge.
In an era of big-gun, corporate hotel chains advertising the glitz of urban conference centers and 24/7 connectivity, Whispering Pines in West Greenwich proudly advertises a center miles from urban life and with shoddy cell phone reception, and yes, plenty of room for that Nerf-gun battle.
The center is something of a quirk in the Ocean State. It is the only state-owned and directly state-managed conference center in Rhode Island and it falls under the umbrella of a university rarely associated with preparing beds and fine meals for senior corporate executives. Its 3,968 square feet of meeting space pales in comparison to the 137,000 square feet available at the R.I. Convention Center, the 34,000 square feet at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Providence Warwick Airport or the 24,800 square feet at the Newport Marriott.
And the center’s 32 guestrooms in cabins nestled among 2,300 acres of largely forested land stand in stark difference to the towering hotels of Providence.
“When folks come here, because we’re so small, we can focus on them,” center Sales Conference Coordinator Ann Marie Marcotte said. “They’re more of a big fish in a small pond here rather than a hotel where 10 conferences might be going on at the same time.”
Founded in the mid-1960s, the Whispering Pines Conference Center sits on land donated to the state by the heirs of W. Alton Jones, who served as president of the oil and gas conglomerate Cities Service Company before dying in a plane crash in 1962. A personal friend of the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jones utilized the property as his personal playground, complete with a stocked pond, a skeet field and fire pits. Eisenhower frequently visited and the manmade lake bordering the conference center bears his name.
Strategy-wise, Marcotte said it makes little sense to present the center as part of an institution normally associated with educating young people. Plus, the center competes with other hotels, not other universities, so management wants the emphasis on the center.
“We’ve really taken the time to focus on the fact that we are a conference center that happens to be a school,” she said.
Campus officials even convinced the R.I. Department of Transportation a few years ago to remove “URI” before “W. Alton Jones campus” on highway signs. Wide-eyed high school students looking for a tour of the South Kingstown campus were instead ending up among goats at the campus’ farm or at the conference center’s remote check-in desk after dutifully following the “URI” signs.
Whispering Pines staffers hope for a very different kind of applicant, one searching for a place to host their next corporate outing, wedding or special event. The center boasts an all-inclusive package of $240 a night for single-occupancy, which includes meals, accommodations and access to the center’s tennis courts, lakeside beach and miles of hiking trails.
Marcotte said she has noticed a shift though, in both who attends and how they book. When the economy was bright, groups departing would book the next year’s conference on the spot. Nowadays, they hold off until later. And when they do book, Marcotte said it is for groups of between 10 and 20 instead of bringing 80 to 90 people as in years past.
“The big recession thing that happened really affected us last year,” Marcotte said.
The center is limited in the kind of deals it can offer. As a so-called enterprise fund of the university, it must make enough money to cover its expenses. And as part of a state institution, Marcotte must follow state purchasing requirements rather than pick her favorite supplies as corporate competitors can. The 30 state employees at the center are also subjected to all the same debates over state employee compensation as their peers.
But much of that remains largely invisible to the corporate executives arriving at the campus. Martin, the Hasbro staffer, said executives were more concerned about where to lie in wait with their Nerf guns.
“Alton Jones … was fun,” she said. “It gave us the opportunity to be outside because it is hard to be in a room all day.” •
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