Boston-based State Financial Services has decided to sell the Hawthorn Suites in Arlington (above) and the Shawmut Inn in Boston’s North Station district.
More than 10 years after opening an urban version of Motel 6 in Boston’s North Station district, the owners of the Shawmut Inn are putting the budget-oriented hotel up for sale.
Located on Friend Street, the Shawmut Inn is the latest Boston hotel being served up to accommodate a growing investor appetite for hospitality properties. The acknowledgement comes just a week after the Kimpton Group confirmed plans to acquire the Nine Zero hotel near Boston Common for $71 million and follows the sale one year ago of the Onyx Hotel in North Station for $28 million.
“We have,” Tina Brzezenski, a principal with the Boston-based ownership, said in confirming her firm has decided to sell the Shawmut Inn, as well as its Hawthorn Suites in Arlington, a 100-unit operation located on the Cambridge line at One Massachusetts Ave. Brzezenski is the daughter of State Financial Services founder Donato Pizzuti, whose firm opened the Shawmut Inn in 1995. “It has worked out well,” Brzezenski said of the strategy to convert the building from an office use. The effort was done in partnership with the Burkhard Corp., another North Station company that also has ownership in the Hawthorn Suites.
CBRE/New England principal David Fitzgerald and the real estate service firm’s hotel specialist, David McElroy, have been retained to market the hotels, said Brzezenski, who referred questions regarding the status of the effort to the brokers. A call for offers is expected within the next two weeks. A sale price was not provided, nor was it clear whether the properties are being sold individually or as a package. The two hotels are different in many respects, including their amenities, pricing expectation and even the surrounding neighborhood. After years of wrangling with East Arlington abutters, the Hawthorn Suites opened in 2002 sporting a mix of rooms designed for extended stay business. Initial rates were quoted up to $250 per night, a range bolstered by a fitness center, dining room and high-speed Internet access. The Hawthorn Suites is located on the fringe of suburban Boston at the site of a former auto dealership.
‘A Perfect Location’
There is no escaping the din outside the Shawmut Inn, with the 5-story property located at Causeway and Friend streets across from the eternally robust Sullivan’s Tap. The Shawmut Inn does not even have a lobby, let alone other accoutrements found at the Hawthorn Suites, although rooms have a microwave and refrigerator. A $2 million reconstruction from the office building into the hotel did yield rooms that adequately block outside noise, while the upkeep of the operation has received accolades from many who have stayed at the property, especially considering room rates that are currently in the $110 to $150 per night range. The Onyx Hotel, meanwhile, is commanding rates from $280 up to $330 per night, even though it is situated barely a block away on Portland Street.
The disposition of the Shawmut Inn not only represents an opportunity for the developers to cash out in a market increasingly favoring sellers, it also reflects recent improvements in the North Station area, said Brzezenski, whose family staked its claim in North Station decades ago.. The vision is now being realized, said Brzezenski, particularly following the dismantling of the Central Artery and elevated MBTA Green Line viaduct, two rusting structures that had long dogged the district. The Shawmut Inn now enjoys substantial light during the daytime following the once-abutting transit way’s disappearance last year.
While the Pizzuti and Wise partnership may be nearing an end at the Shawmut Inn, Brzezenski noted the firm is hardly abandoning the area. The nearby 121 Portland St., a former raincoat factory, is being repositioned for 54 residential condominiums in a plan that would require the construction of two stories. The developers are hoping for city approvals and a start to construction by year’s end, said Brzezenski, whose firm has retained Patrick Sharkey Design as architect for the project. “It’s just a perfect location,” Brzezenski said of the development, one which is planned along with a number of other residential buildings, including several being proposed for sites along the Central Artery route.
Other companies are also upbeat about the area’s prospects. A few doors from the Shawmut Inn, 225 Friend St. is under agreement for $12 million to Everest Partners, and Boston developer H.N. Gorin Inc. revealed plans last week to construct a new office building on a 14,000-square-foot site next to State Financial’s planned residential project.
