by Commonwealth Ventures
The economy in The Greater Boston Area is improving. The job
market is growing. The real estate industry is thriving. Now the
hospitality industry seems to be following suit. With various posts
about the forthcoming developments of condominiums and hotels that
are being announced so frequently, yet another headline has hit
newsstands in Boston. The Innovation District of Boston’s Seaport
has received a great deal of attention and praise of late. Perhaps
anticipation for the future outlook of this eventual energetic
neighborhood could not get any better, but this is obviously not
the case. Now just reported, the firm known as Commonwealth
Ventures has been selected by the Massachusetts Convention Center
Authority to build two mid-priced hotels on the site located across
from the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center!
CV Properties (the division of Commonwealth Ventures tasked with
this initiative) was chosen over one other strong proposal in
particular from Carpenter & Co. It comes to be known that Carpenter
& Co. envisioned one of the hotels to be a 300-room Hyatt Place
while the other would be a 200-room Hyatt House hotel. On the other
hand, CV Properties will partner with Starwood Hotels and Resorts
Worldwide to build a 330-room Aloft hotel as well as a 180-room
Element hotel.
Richard Galvin, the President and Founder of Commonwealth
Ventures is ever so pleased with the approval of the proposal and
felt the need to state that, We are thrilled to be selected and
plan to dive right in and get this thing going. We brought in Jones
Lang LaSalle (NYSE: JLL) as a development partner for their hotel
expertise. The number one job of a developer is to build a great
team and weve done that. Not only will Galvin and his team be
tasked with this new development challenge, but they are already
busy with the under construction project at 1 Channel Center. This
deal, a $225 Million job, will be the headquarters for State Street
and will be comprised of 525,000 square feet to all be completed by
February 2014.
The binding issue with this deal is that Commonwealth Ventures
will be responsible for 100% financing, the design of the hotels,
the construction as well as the function of owning and operating
the hotels once in business. The land was acquired from the MCCA in
the Fall of 2012 and comes with the written rule that all plans
must comply with the guidelines provided by the MCCA, the
community-based Design Advisory Group as well as the Boston
Redevelopment Authority.
More Information: Boston Business
Journal