A plan to gut and redevelop the old Alexandra Hotel at Massachusetts Avenue and Washington Street in the South End-Roxbury borderlands won unanimous approval from the Boston Zoning Board of Appeal on August 13.
The long-planned project already has the okay of the Boston Planning and Development Agency, which signed off on it in March.
The redevelopment is expected to create a 150-room boutique hotel with a ground-floor restaurant and rooftop amenity space. Developers Jas Bhogal, Thomas Calus, and Nick Colavito have said they will restore and retain the Alexandra’s High Victorian Gothic facade, erected with the building in 1875, but that fire and water damage rendered retaining the interior impossible.
An entity associated with Bhogal and Calus purchased the hotel site and an adjacent lot, both spanning 1759-1769 Washington Street, from the Church of Scientology for $11 million. The redevelopment will cap years of back and forth about what to do with the long-vacant building, which was once an inn for Boston’s well-to-do.
“Boston wants to see a rebirth for a building that has been standing vacant for decades as a neighborhood eyesore,” Thomas Calus said in a statement. “We look forward to moving ahead with a plan to restore the Alexandra Hotel’s historic facade in order to preserve a piece of Boston history while also activating a street corner as a positive economic driver.”
Plans for redeveloping the Alexandra site ran into some controversy earlier this year, courtesy of the BPDA saying that the site was located in the South End—though technically it appears to fall on the Roxbury side of Mass. Ave. The agency corrected its apparent mistake, but not before it signed off on the project.
The next step for the project is to go before the South End Landmark District Committee, something the developers anticipate happening in September.
The developers are operating as Alexandra Partners, a joint venture between TCR Development and JB Ventures LLC set up to handle the redevelopment. Other projects by the same team include Ten Farnsworth in Fort Point and Piedmont Park Square in Bay Village.
CBT Architects is designing the Alexandra revamp.
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