Hotel bids add minority partners

The Massachusetts Port Authority and the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority say they will weigh the diversity of the bidders heavily in their scoring. The goal: to use the roughly $800 million project to draw new faces into the local development scene.

"For this stage of the game, it seems like we did have the impact we were seeking in terms of trying to diversify, a little bit, who has a seat at the table in Boston's development," Thomas Glynn, Massport's chief executive, said Tuesday after the investors were disclosed.

Massport wants the hotel project to be built on a parallel path with a $1 billion expansion of the convention center. But that expansion remains in question as Governor Charlie Baker's administration weighs whether to move forward with bonds needed to finance it. If that project doesn't happen, Massport would probably scale back the hotel proposal.

Fallon Co. — led by Joe Fallon and known for redeveloping the nearby Fan Pier — has joined with Capstone Development for its bid. Capstone is a Washington hotel development company led by Norman Jenkins, who is black. Fallon, who could not be reached for comment, and Capstone have submitted three separate bids to build a Hyatt, a Hilton, or a Marriott hotel on the site.

A second development consortium, known as New Boston Hospitality, is being spearheaded by Davis Cos., Dean Stratouly's Congress Group, and hotel consultant Robin Brown. Those developers have pulled together more than 25 local minority investors in their effort to build an Omni-brand hotel.

The list includes a number of familiar faces in Boston's business scene: lawyer Flash Wiley and his wife, management consultant Bennie Wiley; Boston University professor Charles Stith; William "Mo" Cowan of Mintz Levin; lawyer Wayne Budd and his wife, philanthropist Jacqui Budd; and former state Department of Transportation chairman John Jenkins.

"Through our civic activities in Boston, we reached out to local friends and associates in the minority and women community to provide them with the opportunity to invest in this important project," Davis Cos. chief executive Jonathan Davis said in a statement.

The third bidder, led by a Texas hotel developer and Accordia Partners LLC in Boston, offered a similarly diverse group of potential investors. While they might not be as familiar in Boston's business circles or are located out of state, many are prominent business leaders in their own right.

They include former San Antonio Spurs star David Robinson, now an investor with Admiral Capital Group; former Abt Associates CEO Wendell Knox; former Sprint executive Paget Alves; and Ronald McCray, chairman of Illinois-based Career Education Corp.

That third team is looking to build either a Hilton or a Marriott hotel at the site.

Accordia co-managing director Kirk Sykes said the potential investors in his group have not yet committed. They say they first need more information about the potential return on their investment. "Until you know what the subsidy is [for the hotel], until you know what the cost is, until you know what the ground rent is, it's almost impossible to tell somebody what the return is to expect for participating," Sykes said.

Sykes said he drew upon his business network as well as business partner Richard Galvin's contacts to find accredited minority investors for the project.

Massport's effort to attract minority investors, Sykes said, represents a positive step that may lead to a sea change in bringing well-to-do people of color into Boston's construction boom:

"If we can make this a criteria for major projects going forward, we really can change the landscape of the city in terms of the economic structure."

Although the hotel would be built on Massport land, the convention center authority is participating because of the project's importance and proximity to the convention center.

In scoring the bids, the two agencies will give equal weight to four factors: the team's ability to pull the project off, the financing structure, the team's diversity, and the hotel design.

Public agencies often make it clear they want to see diversity when considering bids, but rarely give it a 25 percent weight for scoring purposes.

But Massport and convention center officials said they wanted to show they were serious about encouraging diversity by giving it equal weight with the three other factors. It remains unclear from the documents, however, how big a stake each minority investor would have in the proposals.

"The sentiment that is recurring is that, with all this development that is booming, particularly in the South Boston Waterfront, there doesn't seem to be an ability for minority investors, minority developers, minority business people, to break in," said James Rooney, the convention center authority's executive director. "What we were trying to encourage was significant [minority] participation and . . . the teams approached it differently."

The next step, however, is outside of Rooney's control. The Baker administration is expected to decide soon whether to issue, delay, or shelve the bonds for the convention center expansion.

Meanwhile, Rooney is preparing to leave after championing the expansion for years, to join the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce as its new chief executive in July.

Construction had been expected to start next year on the hotel, with a goal of opening by sometime in 2019, around the time the expansion would be done. If the convention center project is stalled, Massport officials will probably do a market study to reevaluate the demand for hotel rooms in the city.

Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonchesto.