Developer to Begin Construction on Boutique Hotel High-Rise in 2019

BOSTON—Locally-based Hudson Group is seizing on a unique opportunity in the city and expects to begin development next year on a high-rise boutique hotel in the Leather District.

Hudson Group secured approvals from the Boston Planning & Development Agency Board of Directors last week for 150 Kneeland St., a 21-story, 230-room hotel. Noam Ron a principal at Hudson Group, tells Globest.com that the firm believes the hotel will be the only hotel located adjacent to South Station.

Ron says the early estimate of the hard construction cost for the project will run approximately $50 million and that he hopes to begin construction on the venture by mid-2019 and deliver the finished product in 2021. At present, Hudson Group has not selected a flag for the hotel. The project is expected to create more than 40 retail and hotel jobs, as well as 150 construction jobs.

In addition to guest rooms, the hotel will include meeting spaces, publicly accessible food and beverage on the ground floor, as well as other amenities.

“I would say there is no hotel within walking distance of South Station, a major transit hub in Boston,” Ron says. “You go to any major city in the world and you get out of a bus station or bus terminal and it is dotted with hotels.”

He adds that the demand for this project is there and contends that citywide there are still not enough hotel keys.

Ron says that some of the unique features of the property will include “a real dramatic double-height ground floor that includes a café that rolls into a bar program with an open ground floor that leads into the food and beverage experience.”

The limited service hotel will feature some meeting space, but will be focused on providing “super-efficient rooms” for most of what they expect will be transit-oriented guests with the hotel’s location across the street from South Station.

While Hudson Group has not announced a flag for the property, Ron notes, “As you can imagine, the location and the market in Boston has attracted a lot of different groups and we’re fortunate to have gotten a lot of people’s attention.”

Once complete, Hudson Group has committed to a 10-year contribution of 300 free hotel nights annually to people in need of accommodation, an effort meant to address short-term housing emergencies that may occur from crises such as loss of property, medical issues, and immigration displacement.

Hudson Group has consolidated most of its portfolio into two city blocks in the Leather District and Chinatown areas of the city. The firm’s latest completed project was Radian Boston, a joint venture with Forest City Residential. Radian, which opened in May 2014 and was stabilized a year later, is a 26 story, 240-unit apartment tower with ground floor retail and an above grade parking garage. The boutique sized, upscale building at 120 Kingston St. is located at the intersection of three neighborhoods—the Financial District, Chinatown, and the Leather District, along the edge of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The construction hard costs for that project was approximately $80 million (in 2012 costs).

Hudson Group’s other Boston projects include: South Street Lofts, 108 Lincoln St. and the affordable housing Oxford Ping-On project.

Other projects approved by the BPDA last week involved developments that will generate 193 residential units and 885 jobs once construction is complete. Two of the nine projects approved—41 North Margin St. in the North End and Morton Station Village in Mattapan—are fully affordable, generating 63 of the 81 affordable units approved at the BPDA session.