One of Sheraton Boston towers to become Northeastern dorm

Massachusetts’ largest hotel could soon be partially transformed into a dorm for Massachusetts’ largest university. One of the new owners of Sheraton Boston Hotel in Back Bay, an entity managed by bicoastal investment firm Hawkins Way Capital, has proposed converting one of the property’s two towers from a 428-room hotel into a dormitory that could house 854 students. Northeastern University is the dorm’s “initial tenant,” wrote Joshua Bird, general counsel of Hawkins Way, in a letter this month to the Boston Planning and Development Agency. The second Sheraton tower, which rises 29 stories with 792 hotel rooms, “will remain a hotel and is not part of this proposal,” Bird’s letter states. Housing students in hotels was common practice during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to spread out dense student populations. And converting hotels into dorms has happened in Boston before: Suffolk University converted the former Ames Hotel just outside City Hall into a dormitory just a few years ago. Many Boston universities have long been under pressure to add student housing in an effort to ease pressure on neighborhood housing markets, and Northeastern opened an 825-bed dorm — built in partnership with a private student housing developer — on Columbus Avenue in 2018. A year later, they proposed a second similar building at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard near the MBTA Orange Line Ruggles Station. That proposed 25-story, 810-bed dormitory, which faced significant neighborhood opposition, has not progressed at the BPDA since 2021.