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Owners of Back Bay Sheraton plan to permanently turn part of it into a college dorm
By adamg on Tue, 04/11/2023 - 5:21pm
One of the companies that purchased the Sheraton Boston Hotel last year says it will soon file detailed plans to permanently convert the 428-room south tower into a dormitory with room for roughly 854 college students.
In a letter of intent filed with the BPDA, Hawkins Way Capital says it expects its first overall tenant will be Northeastern University, which is already housing students there.
In addition to putting more beds in rooms, the company says it's planning other renovations for the building:
The Proposed Project also includes repurposing both the existing hotel ground floor retail area and3rd floor hotel area to create approximately 12,000 square feet of dedicated student amenities,including uses such as a student lounge, dining facilities, quiet study area, laundry room, and/or fitness center, and a new main building entry dedicated to students. The Proposed Project will also include, for the students, certain site, landscaping, handicapped access, and other improvements to the outdoor plaza adjacent to the planned new dormitory building main entrance.
Hawkins says the hotel's north tower, which it bought with Värde Partners, will remain a more traditional Sheraton hotel.
Belvidere Street Student Housing filings and meeting schedule.
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Comments
Housing shortage trumps Hotel room shortage
If we can't improve both it is better to build up housing
Except that by converting
Except that by converting this tower to a permanent dorm, Northeastern will then admit more students...creating more of a housing crunch! I'm tired of NU, BU & Emerson constantly saying "let us build/buy more dorms so we can lessen the community housing crisis" only to turn around and immediately admit more and more students after they get the dorm.
As a resident, I'm fed-up with this city putting non-taxpaying colleges ahead of residents! The city should tell the hotel owner that they can either sell the tower as affordable housing units or bring them back as hotel rooms for the Sheraton. (For those not keeping track, Back Bay hotel rooms are back to almost pre-covid pricing.) If given those options, I'm certain the owner will happily bring the tower back to hotel rooms.
It doesn't look like Northeastern owns it
So presumably the property remains on the tax rolls.
The property owner isn't a charity (unless NU secretly owns it?) so they're going to seek to maximize their profit. By entering into this deal, it would seem they think they make more money by running a dorm than by running a hotel.
They're not going to turn it into affordable housing since the costs of converting the hotel into housing are probably higher than the rents they'd be allowed to collect.
Cool
We'll put the students in your neighborhood, okay?
If they move here, they are
If they move here, they are residents.
Agreed. Does the NE master
Agreed. Does the NE master plan come into play with off campus housing. And what about the planned new dorm on Tremont St. by Ruggles? NE has agreed to free up some Fenway apartments that NE has used as dorms if that building gets built. Will NE follow through on that?
Excellent news
There aren't that many properties that can be developed in the vicinity of Northeastern, so converting a hotel makes a lot of sense. While housing markets are regional, nothing has a more immediate impact on housing availability and affordability in a specific neighborhood than fewer students.
I am sure they forgot the
I am sure they forgot the shuttle buses clogging the streets to bring them back and forth.
Clogging the streets?
Cars do that quite nicely on their own.
Shuttle buses at least confine multiple people to one vehicle.
really
How dare students take transit instead of ubers? Is this really where we are now?
Since January, Northeastern
Since January, Northeastern has (have?) already been using the south tower—presumably under some special dispensation from the BRA after the public hearings last fall, when Marriott kicked them out of Copley Place. For months now, not a shuttle bus in sight. Does NEU even run shuttle busses?
What shuttle buses?
It's a short walk from the Sheraton to Northeastern, or they can hop on the #39 bus that runs much more frequently than any shuttle would. It seems to be working well with the students at the Midtown.
This whole post
Is like the "bad take olympics" because it's just so precious that you only matter if you're a long-time resident and keep those dirty students out wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have any colleges or hospitals or labs or jobs. Oh, also, this is 854 students who won't be cramming into three-deckers in Mission Hill or Roxbury or JP. But never let some facts get in the way of The Narrative®.
Anyway, yes, horrors about having a 12 minute walk to get to the center of campus from your dorm room. Most of it alongside the Christian Science Plaza which is not the worst place to have to walk in the city. (Yes, you do have to cross Mass Ave, although if you really don't want to you can use the Symphony T stop to get under.)
It is a short walk to most
It is a short walk to most things they need, what shuttle buses are you talking about? If anything it may alleviate traffic stress by bringing students closer to their university and out of the neighborhoods.
I personally think we need more of these.
If you don't provide housing for people with money, then people with money will just displace those without money.
Wrong location
The Sheraton Boston is part of the Prudential Center complex. not in Copley Square. It's on Dalton Street next to the Hynes Convention Center, and just a block from Mass. Ave.
True, it's part of the Pru
So not like the Westin Copley Place (if you don't count the hamster tubes that connect that to the Pru).
But isn't that still part of the overall Copley Square area?
No, not Copley Sq.
I don't consider the Pru as part of Copley Sq.
Huh
I was an undergrad in the mid-1980s and I remember that Sheraton was pretty much a defacto BU, NU, and Emerson overflow dorm all the time I was in school. The local colleges used the rooms for students that they promised to house but ended up not having rooms for.
It used to be a party zone and the students living there would leave the stairwells propped for easy access to the roof. It was a notorious sneak up and drink with your friends zone with a fabulous view.
It’s already a dorm and the
It’s already a dorm and the spaces have already been converted. They’re just asking for permission now.
More of this needs to happen.
More of this needs to happen. During COVID when all the students left town, rents dropped on average 20% across the city. The city should require all colleges to house 100% of their undergrads ‘on campus’
Maybe some empty office buildings can also be converted to dorm space. It would be much cheaper than converting to individual apartments.
Sheraton "in Copley Square"?
We're talking abut the one on Dalton Street, on the other side of the Pru, right? It's a pretty big stretch to classify that neighborhood as "Copley Square."
Public has been walking through that lobby and its Pru corridor
for the last 58 years. Now watch public access get yanked away from us by the developers and city, as usual.
Public Passage Should be Retained
The public access you mention is part of the North Tower section which will remain a hotel. I don't think walling off the South Tower from the rest of the complex will in any way impact the areas that concern you.
I knew the end was nigh when
I knew the end was nigh when Emerson threw out the Burger King at the corner of West and Tremont. It used to be so convenient to buy fries at McDonald's and then sit down for a Whopper at Burger King.