What's New: The Hotel Commonwealth

Tim Kirwan, a 27-year veteran of the hotel industry, has been appointed Managing Director of a new luxury property in Boston, The Hotel Commonwealth. It will open in September 2002, in the Back Bay. It will be part of the refurbishing of Kenmore Square, which will be seriously upgraded and restored to the dignity of its former heritage, where grand hotels were once a way of life. Kirwan says the hotel will be "stylistically rich, state-of-the-art, yet traditional."

With the rejuvenation of Kenmore Square, the area is bound to be another destination point. Anyone presently familiar with the place knows the Square as a series of unattractive store fronts- an ugly trek to Fenway Park, where the boys of summer annually break our hearts. The area also has some of the most hideous architecture in the city. All that will be gone--a bad memory--with the rejuvenation of the place, where new cobbled and brick streets will appear, where the bus station occupying the middle of the wide street will be happily erased, where new condos will be erected, and where a gentrification process will evolve.

Kirwan knows how to build new hotel properties (he's done several), and how to help a city rebuild its heritage. While general manager at the Westin Hotel, he was part of the Providence, Rhode Island renaissance, and deeply involved with their first-rate Convention and Civic Center. Providence is now one of the hottest cities in the northeast. As former general manager of the Bostonian Hotel, Kirwan was part of the Faneuil Hall revitalization of a few decades ago. The Hotel Commonwealth, owned by Great Bay Holdings, is betting that Kirwan can bring some of his savvy and magic to the Back Bay.