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Photo courtesy of Google Maps
The future owners of a Back Bay property plan to convert the building’s 66 hotel rooms into apartments while retaining office space for tenants including current owner YW Boston.
Boston-based Beacon Communities has an agreement to acquire 140 Clarendon St., which includes the 66-room Hotel 140 along with 63 single-room occupancy units and 56 apartments, the 250-seat Lyric Stage of Boston theater and several office and retail tenants.
A redevelopment plan for the 163,800-square-foot building calls for conversion of 50,000 square feet of hotel space that’s been operating below capacity during COVID into affordable housing units, health and wellness space and offices for the Pine Street Inn and Beacon Residential Management.
Beacon plans to renovate the single-room occupancy units and apartments, creating 210 units which all would include bathrooms and kitchens, and would be reserved for households earning 60 percent or less of area median income, according to a notification letter submitted Friday to the Boston Planning and Development Agency.
Additional building upgrades include new elevators to improve accessibility, roof and building envelope repairs and HVAC upgrades.
YW Boston will occupy new offices on the third floor. The theater, ground-floor commercial spaces and the Boston Public School’s Snowden International School will remain.
Beacon Communities will partner with the Pine Street Inn to provide housing, programming and support services for formerly homeless residents, according to the letter from Beacon Communities Vice President of Development Darcy Jameson.
Boston’s hotel occupancy rate has dropped 68 percent during the pandemic, with only 26 percent of the city’s hotel rooms occupied on a typical day, according to Pinnacle Advisory Group research. Average daily rates have declined from $261 in 2019 to $163 in 2020, according to Boston-based Pinnacle.
A recent survey of hotel owners and operators by the American Hotel & Lodging Association found that 71 percent do not expect to remain in business beyond six months without immediate government assistance.
