Central Square’s first boutique hotel checks in amid other changes in the area

Central Square’s first boutique hotel, 907 Main, is due to open in the spring of 2020, the latest change in the Cambridge enclave off the Red Line.

The five-story, 67-room inn at Main and Columbia streets is already collecting plaudits, including for the eateries and the look that it will bring to a Central sometimes described as gritty and certainly caught between the posher environs of Harvard-dominated Harvard Square on one end and M.I.T.-dominated Kendall Square on the other.

“There was a time—let’s say 25 years ago—when the idea of a boutique hotel in Central Square would have made as much sense as a beauty parlor for salamanders,” Globe travel writer Christopher Muther wrote. “A lot can change in 25 years.”

Indeed. Case in point is another newer Central Square project. Studio apartments at the 46-unit Ten Essex at Massachusetts Avenue and Essex Street started at $2,500 a month. That project wrapped construction in September, with units leasing briskly amid Cambridge’s general housing shortage.

The boutique 907 Main, which Gensler designed, will include an outpost of Toscanini’s Ice Cream and a new restaurant called the Dial (rendered above). The 1871 building had hosted 12 apartments, and its current developers purchased it in 2008, with construction on the hotel starting in late 2017. The hotel will retain some of the building’s original features, including brick walls and bay windows.

Room rates aren’t clear yet, but 907 Main looks to have picked a particularly fortuitous time to open in the Boston area. The region’s hotel market is expected to enter the first half of 2020 strongly, with higher room rates and greater revenue per room. Stay tuned.