EASTIE HOTEL EYES EXPANSION
Nixes restaurant plans for more rooms
The developer of the 178-room Hilton Garden Inn Boston Logan Airport on Route 1A in East Boston wants to add additional rooms to the all-suites business hotel, after unfruitful efforts to land tenants for two proposed restaurant/retail sites on the property.
Fall River-based First Bristol Corp. is seeking Boston Planning & Development Agency approval for an additional 84 hotel rooms in place of a 4,035-square-foot retail/restaurant pad on the eastern edge of the property, according to a notice of project change filed with the agency for review.
“The goal here would be to build upon and strengthen the proven success of the existing hotel,” First Bristol’s James Karam said in a letter to the BPDA.
In 2013, the BPDA approved a planned $31.5 million, 112,830- squarefoot development on just more than six acres of then-vacant land. The original project included the five-story hotel and two proposed retail/restaurant pads totaling 10,283 square feet on either side of the hotel and fronting Boardman Street. While construction of
the hotel was completed in the fall of 2015, First Bristol’s retail brokerage tried for three years to attract tenants for the other two restaurant/retail sites without success. “Despite diligent efforts, including the lease negotiation, site work and foundation work for these retail sites, no potential retail/restaurant tenants have materialized,” Karam said in the letter to the BPDA. “It appears that the cost of construction and the challenging retail market, with low projected sales volumes, rendered these sites untenantable for retail/restaurant purposes.”
The 45,718-square-foot hotel addition would eliminate about 25 of the development’s 346 parking spaces.
The revised plans are expected to result in 156 new vehicle trips into the site on an average weekday compared to the original project, and 162 additional trips on a Saturday, according to a traffic impact study completed by Vanasse & Associates Inc., an Andover transportation engineering and planning company. Of those new trips, seven are expected during the weekday morning peak hour, 15 during the weekday evening peak hour and 11 during the Saturday midday peak hour.