Raffles Boston (40 Trinity Place) | 426 Stuart Street | Back Bay

Equilibria said:
www.bostonglobe.com

You may not know the name of this hotel yet, but soon it will be a standout in the Boston skyline - The Boston Globe

Singapore-based Raffles chose Boston to open its first North American hotel, and after years of planning, the 35-story building will loom large in the Back Bay.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

What a BS headline. This will "loom" over nothing. It's across the street from the Hancock and will be next door to the BXP Back Bay buildings.

Also, the level of corporate brown-nosing in this piece would make Shirley Leung blush.

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LOL! Someone named Shmessy5 wrote something very similar in the comments section there this morning. Great minds think alike!
 
Pity Chris Muther, he's not used to writing development stories. He's a travel writer. Not a lot of travel happening.
 
Are there any more renders of this building? Like a Back Bay panorama shot from Cambridge or something...???
 
I know a bit off-Raffles, but since the mall business is so bad right now, I wonder if counterintuitively, Simon builds office/residential on their properties to generate some revenue, even if it would probably many years to get something approved, built and leased out.
 
Czervik.Construction said:
I know a bit off-Raffles, but since the mall business is so bad right now, I wonder if counterintuitively, Simon builds office/residential on their properties to generate some revenue, even if it would probably many years to get something approved, built and leased out.
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Probably belongs in the New Retail Thread, but the answer to that question is yes - but not in urban city centers. They're looking at and expecting shifts to suburban "villages," which they refer to as "lifestyle centers." Overall, from Simons perspective, not a bad idea to center suburban densification on a preexisting mall, with all the highway and car access that implies. At the very least it's better land use than parking lots. Simon is actually doing pretty well financially; even through the pandemic they've recorded a pretty substantial profit, as they continue to collect rent even if the stores themselves struggle; over the years they actually bought out a lot of struggling retailers, like JCP, Aeropostale and Forever 21.

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Czervik.Construction said:
I know a bit off-Raffles, but since the mall business is so bad right now, I wonder if counterintuitively, Simon builds office/residential on their properties to generate some revenue, even if it would probably many years to get something approved, built and leased out.
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Much of Copley place is already office (and I think some housing?)
 
I wish this building was 80-100 feet taller to give it that much more presence and fill in the spine of Back Bay.
 
Rough guess- 5 to 10 years away.

The Simon portfolio is mostly high end malls. Pre-Covid the mall business was undergoing a slow motion death due to online retail. Covid has accelerated the culling of the weak, but even the highest end (Simon) is hit by high vacancies, and by lease income that depends in part on “overage” payments (the tenant pays not only a base rent but a percentage of sales to the landlord). So when sales are off, as they are, lease income is down.

Simon probably needs to complete the cycle and stabilize a bit. But who knows, maybe they sell the rights to someone while money is cheap. Your guess is as good as mine.
 
Building luxury condos on top of a luxury brand mall makes too much sense IMO to not happen eventually, but I think well be waiting at least a decade for the demand to build up again for that kind of high-end high-rise luxury.
 
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