I’ve been following this for quite awhile now, for years W Hotels was has been rumored to open one location in Boston. There were two different areas suggested – one in the Theatre district, and one in the North End of town. In fact, the W Residences’s website as specified that the W Boston is coming soon for at least a year now. I do not know the exact details on what happened to the initial locations, but it looks as though it can finally be confirmed that the W is finally making its way into Beantown!

Model of the W Boston Hotel & Residences

I was looking through Starwood Hotel’s new hotel openings page today and they have listed under Boston, the W Boston Hotel & Residences opening in July 2009 – but it leaves the address as “TBD”. Since I knew that they obviously had a site and probably construction currently taking place I did a Google search and came up with a bunch of information – one confirmation came directly from the City of Boston, where according to the minutes of the Boston Redevelopment Agency, on July 19th, 2007 approval was granted for the construction of the hotel.

The W Boston Hotel & Residences, being developed by Sawyer Enterprises, and designed by William Rawn Associates, is going to be located in the theatre district at the intersection of Stuart & Tremont Street, with an address of “100 Stuart Street”, previously a vacant lot, it was initially supposed to be the the Loews Boston Hotel. That project was put on hold after the terrorist attacks of 2001, yet the developer always planned on putting a hotel on that site. In mid-2007, approvals were granted for the W, with the major changes from the initial Loews Project being a reduction in the number of hotel rooms and retail space on the property, finally, in late October of 2007 groundbreaking finally began. From the looks of the pictures, there still is plenty of work which needs to occur – the least of which is digging in the ground for the building foundation. I think a Late 2009 opening is a safer bet at this point rather than a July 2009 opening.

The W Boston will be located in the parking lot in the center of the image. The street going top to bottom on the image is Stuart Street.

Here are the stats on one of W’s latest project in North America:

• 25 Stories
• 235 Guest rooms
• 123 Residences (although I’ve seen references to 111 Residences as well)
• 12,000 square feet of restaurants, retail space and a spa. (Most likely a Randy Gerber restaurant/bar, and a Bliss Spa)
• 142 space underground parking garage.

Rendering of W Boston, looking across Tremont Street

The hotel will be a very modern, sleek, glass enclosed building. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have any of W’s newer signature items such as a mid-tower open-air pool or an open-air bar, but I think Boston will be happy enough as it is.

In the mean time I’m going to keep an eye out for www.wbostonresidences.com because it currently re-directs to W Hotel’s homepage, but in the months to come there should be more details about this exciting development in Boston.

andrew@alconic-inc.com