The Theater District's longest-running drama has taken a fresh twist: The long-empty site at 240 Tremont Street has a new development team in place and a new vision for what it might look like if it ever gets built. The new developers, led by Amherst Media and Robert Gatnick, now see a “tall and slender,” 19-story hotel with 240 rooms, up from 16 stories with 200 rooms, per The Herald's Greg Turner. Tall and slender? No problem!
The $66 million hotel would offer “micro-rooms,” smaller, cheaper accommodations in a first for Boston. Recently filed plans detail “operable glass panels” along a ground-floor restaurant, three-story electronic video boards and “linear strips” of LED fixtures highlighting the architecture. Not only that, but the hotel would be connected to the neighboring Wilbur Theater's Cure Lounge nightclub by a 12-foot-wide alley all done up like Shubert Alley in New York City. Action!
Actually, given that developers and the city have been trying to get something built at the site since the 1990s, don't hit the box office just yet. The new developers do plan to break ground soon and be done in 2014. Just nobody say, "Macbeth."
· Reworked Play in Theater District [Herald]