Image courtesy of CBT Architects

Will the third time be the charm for a development team’s efforts to redevelop the old Hotel Alexandra property in Boston?

Alexandra Partners LLC, controlled by Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty agent Jas Bhogal and TCR Development principal Thomas Calus, bought the 1767-1769 Washington St. site on the South End-Roxbury line in mid-2019 and permitted a 150-room hotel, with plans to break ground in 2020 – plans that were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then in 2021, the development team re-permitted the project as a 106-unit condominium tower under the city of Boston’s compact living pilot program.

Now, Alexandra Partners wants to switch the project back to a hotel according to a March 25 filing with the Boston Planning & Development Agency.

“The financial markets of 2022-2023 and the attendant interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve of 5.5% in 18 months has substantially impaired the available financing in the residential housing construction market. As a result, the residential project is not presently economically viable,” the developers’ attorney Marc LaCasse wrote in a letter to the BPDA.

The latest iteration of the design isn’t materially different from the 2019 proposal, LaCasse wrote. CBT Architects designed the latter, and is returning to the project as the architect of record.

CBT’s designs call for restoration of the historic Ruskinian Gothic facade of the 1875-era building that occupies most of the site, but much of the building’s internal structure will be demolished to make way for a 13-story tower holding most of the rooms.

The local hotel market is undersupplied with rooms, analysts and state convention officials say, and both occupancy and financial performance have rebounded past pre-pandemic levels. But the current interest rate environment has nonetheless delayed groundbreakings on a slew of permitted hotel projects throughout the Boston region.