South End’s Hotel Alexandra site would become boutique hotel under new plans

A group of developers on November 30 further detailed their earlier proposal for tearing down everything but the stone facade of the five-story Hotel Alexandra building at 631 Massachusetts Avenue in the South End-Roxbury borderlands and replacing it with a 12-story, 150-room boutique hotel complete with rooftop bar.

Such a transformation would it would cap years of back and forth on the Hotel Alexandra site. The Church of Scientology bought it in 2008, and then put it up for sale in 2014, having failed to come up with the financing to convert it into a local headquarters.

The heir to the CVS fortune inked an agreement to buy the largely vacant and dilapidated site in 2017, but the circa-1875 property’s poor condition precluded redevelopment plans in that case.

The church put the site back on the market in March 2018, and still technically owns it and the adjacent vacant lot at 1767-1769 Washington Street.

The same group of developers—Jas Bhogal, Thomas Calus, and Nick Colavito—originally proposed the boutique hotel on the site in August 2018. The November 30 proposal filing represents another step in the review process.

Interestingly, the plans do not call for any on-site parking, citing the proximity of the site at Massachusetts Avenue and Washington Street to public transportation. The hotel would provide valet service, though. Stay tuned.

• Boutique hotel with rooftop bar proposed at Hotel Alexandra site in Boston’s South End [Biz Journal]
• South End’s Hotel Alexandra site could be reborn as boutique inn [Curbed Boston]