A Very Bostonian Hotel

The BU-tification of Kenmore Square lies in the new Hotel Commonwealth…

By Steven Rodriguez

Not too long ago, a late night stroll through Kenmore Square would have included passing by the IHOP overflowing with students. You would have seen a drunk or two stumble home, and perhaps a present they left on the sidewalk. The music from bars and clubs would have kept pumping until the wee hours. You could overhear students saying “I wonder how I’m gonna sneak her past my RA.” Shady alleys and dirty streets made Kenmore Square infamous in Boston, and put the area on the low end of “places to see” in the city.

“It wasn’t pretty, but it was ours. It had character,” says Jennifer Langdon, College of Engineering senior.

A walk through Kenmore Square tonight would be a different experience.

The IHOP is gone, along with twelve other buildings. The streets are cleaner, the drunks have been rerouted, and the music isn’t quite as loud. Something different is being piped into Kenmore Square, and its source is behind the scaffolding at 650 Beacon Street: the Hotel Commonwealth.

“This particular hotel is designed to be a specifically Bostonian, personalized, Kenmore Square experience; that’s the whole baseline of this hotel,” says hotel managing director Tim Kirwan.

The four-star boutique hotel is part of a local and state effort to renew Kenmore Square and revitalize the surrounding area. When the master plan is completed, sidewalks will be repaved, eighty trees will be planted, the bus station will be rebuilt, and the Square will come to life again, with the Hotel Commonwealth as the centerpiece.

As with most things in Back Bay, Boston University has a large hand in the Hotel Commonwealth pie. To promote the revitalization effort in Kenmore, BU has signed on to the hotel project as a financial partner. This role gives the University a strong say in the hotel’s design and ties the already geographically linked BU community to the hotel.

BU’s financial investment is more than just going into a new hotel: the Hotel Commonwealth is the first big step towards creating a new, glitzy, and chic Kenmore Square. The present Kenmore community might not be willing, or financially able, to welcome or accept this change. Many groups—including the eclectic stores in Kenmore, the Hotel Workers’ Union, and the BU student body—have mixed feelings about the effects the hotel has had and will have on the area.

A Hotel Unmatched, This Side of the Mississippi

“It’s going to become a destination inside a destination,” says Kirwan, a decorated twenty-seven year hotel industry veteran, former manager of the Bostonian, and BU School of Hospitality Advisory Board member.

When the Hotel Commonwealth opens its doors this winter, customers will be treated to a unique experience. Each room will include such luxuries as pillow-top mattresses, bathrobes, L'Occitane bath amenities, two large televisions with CD/DVD players, Frette linens, and down pillows and comforters. Many rooms will feature a large parlor with custom-designed furniture overlooking Commonwealth Avenue, or a view of Fenway Park (behind the Mass Pike).

In addition to the plush amenities, the hotel will feature room service, catering, and two restaurants, created by Michael Schlow and Christopher Myers of downtown’s Radius and Via Matta. The first restaurant will be Great Bay, a “seafood emphasis, upscale lunch and dinner restaurant. A spectacular space,” says Kirwan. The other restaurant will be a more casual, French-style sidewalk bistro catering to the breakfast, lunch, and dinner crowds.

If the accommodations and restaurants do not draw you in, the almost 30,000 square feet of retail space will be sure to tempt you. Far from the pipe shops and used record stores sprinkled across Kenmore, the hotel’s miniature mall will feature “wine stores and book stores. In fact, we’ve tried to find only local retailers. We did have discussions with national stores, but that was short-lived. We prefer to be local… a very Bostonian hotel,” says Kirwan.

But the hook for students, according to Kirwan, is the hotel’s free wireless T3 connection—compatible hotels only offer a slower T1 connection. Even better is that the network is designed to spillover onto the sidewalk and bistro: all you have to do to link up is to sit near the hotel with your laptop. “You will have the ability to sit at our café out on the sidewalk and have lunch and uplink and do emails on our T3 speed, gratis.”

With competitive rates—from $200 to $260 this February—the Hotel Commonwealth will open with a distinct edge in the aggressive Boston hotel market.

The Not-So Limited Partner

For the past few decades, Boston University has spearheaded an effort to renovate Kenmore Square, clean up its parts gone to seed, and get out the cheap stores—all the qualities of Kenmore that students held dear. Several years ago, the University bought night club and bar space in Kenmore in order to make way for the more attractive Barnes & Noble and Gap (which has since closed). Through this project, the university can further promote the BU-tification of Kenmore with a centerpiece that idealizes all the changes BU wants to make in the area.

BU’s first tie to the Hotel Commonwealth was when Great Bay Holdings, the owner of the hotel, bought several BU-owned buildings in Kenmore Square in order to build the hotel. The university has since signed a contract as a limited-term financial partner. In other words, BU is the bank supplying the funding for the hotel.

“We have an obligation to be an independent, luxury hotel,” says Kirwan. “BU has an interest—and wouldn’t finance us if they didn’t—in seeing the entire Kenmore area improved, that’s their commitment to our hotel.”

As finance partner the university has a large influence on the shaping of the hotel and its amenities. For example, the hotel will have direct dial accessibility to BU. So if students’ parents are staying in the hotel, they only have to dial 2-8351, for example, to reach their child’s dorm. Another BU feature of the Hotel Commonwealth is a set of custom-made DVDs featuring archives of BU commencement, special event, and historic speeches that will be available from the hotel’s complimentary DVD library.

Even special rates for BU students and families during move-in and move-out weeks are being considered.

Despite the business connection between the hotel and BU, Kirwan says, “we try to make clear that it’s not BU’s owned and operated hotel. It’s Great Bay Holdings who owns and operates the hotel. BU is only our finance partner.”

Kirwan also makes it clear that the hotel’s plans for community improvement are separate and different from the university’s plans for the improvement of Kenmore Square.

Revitalization Reverberations

In its infancy, the Hotel Commonwealth has already jostled the Kenmore Square community. Storeowners and students have mixed feelings of welcome and nostalgia, while the workers from the former Howard Johnson have called for a boycott on the hotel.

Susan Sherdabonavich, the manager of Campus Camera next to Myles Standish Hall, says it “would be nice to see a new business in the area.” Sherdabonavich is confident that her store will survive the Kenmore revitalization. She believes Campus Camera can possibly succeed from the upturn in business usually associated with hotels, even though the hotel is likely to spark rent hikes and attract new, bigger businesses.

Campus Camera’s parent company, Color Technique, has “worked with other hotels to help the concierge get jobs done quickly for hotel guests,” says Sherdabonavich. Campus Camera has not worked out such a relationship with the Hotel Commonwealth, but Sherdabonavich expressed interest in developing one.

Other small shop owners on Kenmore are not as ready to accept the new landmark.

Stuart Freedman, the manager of Nuggets, a used music and video store a block down from the hotel, declined to comment on the new hotel. A previous interview about the hotel turned sour and upset him. He said: “Talk to me after the hotel is built, then I’ll give you a mouthful of comments.”

Storeowners aren’t the only ones upset about the hotel. The Local 26 of the Hotel Workers’ Union has a website and flyers asking: “Did you know that Union housekeepers are losing their jobs as a result of the closing of the Howard Johnson in Kenmore Square, and that the new Hotel Commonwealth will open under anti-union management?” As a result, the Local 26 is asking for a boycott on the hotel.

Kirwan made the statement that launched the boycott in a February issue of the Boston Business Journal. In it, he said: "Hotel owners and hotel managers essentially position the hotels to either take a neutral position on the issue or an aggressive, nonunion position on the issue. I think we're going to be interested in becoming a nonunion hotel. I think we can be more competitive that way."

The “Boycott the Hotel Commonwealth” website, operated by the Local 26, says that the union “will continue [its] ongoing actions until [it] reach[es] an agreement with the hotel operators.”

As for Kirwan, he says that the union “took one bit of a sentence and made it look like I was saying I’m anti-union.”

Beyond the storeowners and the Local 26, there is a longer-standing, more dominant member of the Kenmore community: BU students. Many students, especially those in the School of Hospitality Administration, are looking forward to the new hotel. “I think it’s great that they’re using SHA students for interns. It’s a great experience for the hospitality students,” says College of Arts and Science junior Jesse Rauch.

However, the older students miss the days of a less flashy Kenmore Square.

“I miss the IHOP the most. Now there is no 24-hour restaurant near the university,” says Dalia Debs, a College of Arts and Sciences sophomore and Boston native. “I kind of miss the clubs and bars. Those are what made the place fun, and a little dangerous.”

Students and the Kenmore community are watching the landmark square transform before their eyes. The Hotel Commonwealth is ushering out the gunk and grime that once defined Kenmore, and paving the way for a ritzier, more glamorous future. If all goes well, 2003 graduates will not recognize Kenmore Square when they return for their ten-year reunion. Thanks to the BU-tification process, the class of 2013 will know a fashionable Kenmore: one of a less eclectic, less funky character.