A hotel plan that would create 60 new permanent jobs on Northeastern-owned land in Lower Roxbury moved forward with the developer’s recent presentation to the community.
Newcastle Hotels shared details of its proposal with the Parcel 18 Task Force, the community oversight and outreach body on development plans at the site.
Parcel 18, at the corner of Tremont Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard, also holds the Renaissance Park office building. Newcastle will build the Marriott Hotel in cooperation with Boston-based Columbia Plaza Associates (CPA), which includes notable local developer Ken Guscott.
Newcastle told the task force that the hotel will employ about 60 workers from the local community. Officials said their practice has been to hire locally and train workers for potential advancement throughout the hotel chain.
The Boston architectural firm Stull and Lee, which designed the Ruggles MBTA station and created the Parcel 18 master plan, is designing the hotel.
Newcastle will kick off the formal regulatory process with the April filing of a “project notification form” with the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
Task force members said they were pleased that Northeastern is following through on its commitment on the final development of the land, and the hotel project is advancing after decades in limbo. The state cleared several lots, including the one designated Parcel 18, for a highway in the late 1960s. When that plan was scrapped in the early 1970s, the state convened the Parcel 18 Task Force, drawn from five neighborhood community development corporations, state officials and Northeastern, the property’s abutter. The land was transferred from the state to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which in 1987 supported CPA’s plan to build a hotel and office building.
The office building was rented to the Registry of Motor Vehicles and the hotel was put on hold based on economic projections; after the Registry left in1994, the task force asked Northeastern to assume stewardship over the land, in conjunction with CPA.
Northeastern renamed the building Renaissance Park and went ahead with a planned parking garage. In 2007, after more than two years of community meetings on siting residence halls, the university has begun construction of a building that will house 1,200 students, as well as retail and office space, at Parcel 18.
— Jim Chiavelli