Developer has plans for old YW Boston building

Proposes Pine Street partnership

Developers are proposing to buy the old hotel and YWCA complex right next to the Hancock building and add more apartments and services for people with low incomes.

Beacon Communities, the affordable-housing-centric company that’s proposing to buy the building from YW Boston, wrote that one main mission of the project would be to “ensure that the historic YW building, built in the 1920s, continues to support those in need.”

The plan involves changing 50,000 feet of “underutilized” hotel and office space into affordable-housing units, common areas and offices for organizations including the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter, which is several blocks away. The building eventually would have 210 housing units, all restricted to people who make less than 60% of the area median income. The developers wrote that they expect that people with Section 8 housing vouchers would be living in all of the apartments.

The company would partner with the Pine Street Inn for “wrap-around” services for people in need.

The exterior of the old brick building would remain essentially the same. Inside currently are a hotel, an annex of Boston Public Schools, YW offices, some ground-floor businesses and a mixture of rooming-house-style units and low-income apartments.

The developers say this is a way to avoid “residential and commercial gentrification” of the building, which is in a swanky neighborhood.

The building at 140 Clarendon St. in the Back Bay is right in the shadow of 200 Clarendon, formerly known as the Hancock building.