Sunstone Hotel Investors Gets Set to Hit the Bricks
Marriott Long Wharf Owner Plans Improvements To Barren Walkways Around Waterfront Building
By Thomas Grillo
Reporter
B&T photo by Thomas Grillo
The brick walkways surrounding the Boston Marriott Long Wharf Hotel could be replaced with grass and trees.
The windswept brick wasteland around the Boston Marriott Long Wharf Hotel is set for a makeover.
Sunstone Hotel Investors purchased the 402-room Marriott last spring for $231 million from Downtown Boston Properties. Company officials have met with Boston Redevelopment Authority staffers to brief them on plans to update the 25-year-old hotel on the city?s waterfront.
Under discussion are designs that would replace portions of the exterior walls with glass; surround the hotel with street-level caf?s, restaurants and shops; and eliminate the barren brick walkways on all sides of the building.
?We believe the area of the hotel located next to Christopher Columbus Park has lots of potential,? said Bryan Giglia, Sunstone?s vice president of corporate finance. ?We are looking at ways to increase the hotel?s value and overall appearance.?
Giglia provided few details, saying only that a $14 million renovation of the rooms and the addition of several suites will commence in November. He said the California-based company is evaluating opportunities around the hotel for increased public access.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he?s excited that Sunstone is willing to spend money to improve the hotel?s waterfront access and create places that the public wants to visit. ?The new owners will make the area more attractive,? he said.
City officials said the facelift could represent a dramatic change to a section of the waterfront that resembles City Hall Plaza.
?Now, the hotel consists of blank brick walls and a plaza to match,? said Richard McGuinness, the BRA?s deputy director for waterfront planning. ?So the visual effect is you don?t know where the ground ends and the building begins. We?ve been trying to improve both sides of Long Wharf.?
The city, along with the state Executive Office of Transportation, recently invested $1.5 million to improve Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, which is located next to the Marriott. For years, the green space has been an oasis to relax and enjoy the harbor. The grassy park features a tot lot, a statue of Christopher Columbus, a fountain and a rose garden.
?We redid the park and walkways and now we?re looking at what can be done with the buildings around it,? said McGuinness. ?More than 3 million people go to Long Wharf annually, so it?s a hub itself and we want to activate it.?
Several years ago, the BRA convinced the Marriott to open Tia?s, a restaurant that spills onto the plaza. Also at the city?s urging, the hotel built ticket booths in front of the facility to help make it a destination.
?But to have a real impact on that building, the new owners will have to see whether they can break through the brick, evaluate what?s behind there and see if it can be moved,? McGuinness said.
The goal, he added, is to remove portions of the red-brick exterior walls and create first-floor retail that will overlook the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway and the harbor and make the area more pedestrian-friendly.
?A Good Sign?
While the Boston Harbor Hotel on Rowes Wharf offers caf?s and a huge archway that provides dramatic waterfront views, the Marriott reflects the era when it was build, according to McGuinness.
When construction was planned for the Marriott in the 1970s, the harbor was polluted and there was not much street activity along the abandoned wharfs. Waterfront builders were faced with the Southeast Expressway on one side and a polluted harbor on the other. As a result, architects did not design projects that looked onto the water or the street. Some say the exterior of the Marriott looks more like a bunker than a 3-star hotel.
?If you notice, the New England Aquarium does not have any windows,? McGuinness said. ?Boston Harbor was not so valuable back then.?
The other factor that hurt the Marriott, he noted, was that the original owners failed to place the kitchen, storage and laundry facilities beneath the hotel. If they had, perhaps more space would have been available for the public.
?They were reluctant to dig deep because that?s filled tideland, so the cost and engineering was a factor,? McGuinness said. ?If they had dug, they could have located some of their services below grade.?
Today, the elevated Central Artery has been replaced with the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The 27-acre park includes gardens, fountains, and a tree-lined promenade. In addition, new construction including the InterContinental Boston has helped transform the waterfront.
The plan by Sunstone comes on the heels of a study earlier this year that named Boston to the ?Hall of Shame? for cities with the world?s worst waterfront development and limited pedestrian access.
The Project for Public Spaces, a New York-based nonprofit group dedicated to creating and sustaining public places, criticized Boston for failing to live up to its potential as a world-class city. At the time, Frederick Kent, the group?s president, said Boston lacks ?must-see waterfront destinations? and ?has never lived up to its potential as a city by the bay.?
The seven-city list put Boston fourth behind New York City, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Hong Kong, and just ahead of Tokyo, Seattle and Paris. Despite a handful of new developments in the city?s Seaport District ? including the InterContinental Boston Hotel, with its waterfront park ? the study found that most new oceanside developments lack quality public spaces.
At the time, Vivian Li, executive director of The Boston Harbor Association, an advocacy group whose mission is to promote a clean and accessible harbor, dismissed the study and said Boston does not deserve the designation.
McGuinness also disputed the study, noting that while some waterfront locations have limited public access to protect public safety and marine industry operations, there are connections to a network of trails including the Emerald Necklace, the Charles River Esplanade and the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
McGuinness said the report failed to consider Boston?s HarborWalk, which offers 47 miles of green and open space through the city?s waterfront neighborhoods. It extends from the downtown area to the Neponset River through East Boston, Charlestown, the North End, South Boston and Dorchester.
Menino stressed that the record per-room price for a Boston hotel, $568,000, is another signal that Boston is the place to be.
?It?s a good sign when a national corporation is willing to pay those kinds of prices,? he said. ?It demonstrates that they are interested in investing in Boston and the price they paid shows lots of confidence in the hotel market in our city. It means Boston has a great future.?
