Remember this one? The city O.K.'d the 47-story, 318-condo addition to Copley Place in November 2011, despite an "Occupy the Mayor's Office" effort by residents concerned about the tower's affordability and the shadows it might cast. It was to be the tallest condo tower in Boston (this was before the Millennium Tower was announced). Then, about a year later, plans for the Copley Place spire went poof, as the developer, mall-making giant Simon Property Group, suspended its development plans. It was cryptic re: the motives for the suspensions.
All Simon said, basically, was that it wanted to reevaluate its plans, and never mind the bafflement of pols who had supported the tower against the local opposition. Now! It looks like the Copley Place tower is back on, but as rentals rather than condos. Here was Simon chairman and C.E.O. David Simon in a February earnings call for the publicly traded company:
[W]e're still designing the building. And we may need—because of that design, we may need to go back through some administrative approvals that we don't think will be a big deal. But the idea that we're circling right now is to do mostly rentals, though there will be some condo element to it. And so you'd have essentially a hybrid building. Simon has been otherwise mum on plans for restarting the Copley Place tower (we'll let you know if we hear back from them). But it's likely, given the fertile environment for apartment-building in Boston (due in no small part to the city's consistently high rents), that the well-capitalized firm sees no reason to not move forward with a big exclamation point in Back Bay that's mostly apartments rather than condos.
· Simon Property Group Management Discusses Q4 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript [Seeking Alpha]
· The Mystery of Copley Place: Developer Halts Major Tower [Curbed Boston]
· How Millennium Tower Will Look Against the Boston Skyline [Curbed Boston]
· Our Updated Residential Heatmap: 66 Projects and Counting [Curbed Boston]
· The Cheapest, Priciest Areas to Rent a Hub Apartment [Curbed Boston]
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