Metters opens strip mail at alma mater - opening of shopping centre in Prairie View, Texas by business executive Samuel Metters - Brief Article

Black Enterprise, Feb, 2001 by Cliff Hocker

Prairie View gets a face-lift with help from Metters Industries CEO

University Center, a $4.5 million strip mall project near the rural, historically black campus of Prairie View A & M University, in Prairie View, Texas, will kick off in March 2001 with the opening of retail and professional office space, as well as a Williams Chicken restaurant. The construction of a 60-room hotel, a retail-store cluster, and a gas station will follow.

The way the deal is shaping up and the issues that are coming into play make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Leadership by a nine-year veteran of the BE INDUSTRIAL/SERVICE 100 list is a key component. Dr. Samuel Metters, an Austin, Texas, native and Prairie View College of Engineering graduate, has gained success and fortune through Metters Industries Inc. (No. 78 on the BE INDUSTRIAL/SERVICE 100 list, with $34 million in sales), a McLean, Virginia-based technology company. Tipped off by Charles Higgs, executive director of the Prairie View alumni association, Metters did an 11th-hour rescue of the land of an aging alumni family. He flew down his Beltway lawyer to pay delinquent taxes, stopping the auction of the family's 52-acre property. He spent $17,000 of his own money to pull the land out of foreclosure. The price of seven acres covered the taxes, and Metters, 66, paid the family $500,000 for a total of 12 acres.

Approximately 40 miles from Houston on the road to Austin, this site, which sits on U.S. Highway 290, turned out to have excellent development potential. The 6,000-student Prairie View campus is the economic engine of Waller County. Still, students and faculty have always had to travel three to rive miles to white neighborhoods to shop and eat. The area had plenty of demand, little supply.

"This is something where you can go into it and have a few royalties coming in the rest of your lire; plus, you're giving back to your alma mater," says Metters.

Other African American investors for the project were Metters' siblings, but they sold back their interest in the land to Metters. He is working with service station and hotel chains to find two anchor tenants willing to invest.

Dallas-based Williams Chicken, a black-owned restaurant franchise, is one of the first tenants. A 15- to 20-person staff will be recruited from the university and local community.

"I thought this would be a good opportunity for us to do for ourselves and reap the benefits for ourselves and form a partnership with the black colleges, which would give us access to future management and owners so we could duplicate this all across the country," says Hiawatha Williams, the 51-year-old owner of Williams Chicken.