Hotel Alexandra

Hotel Alexandra would restore an 1875 Victorian Gothic landmark on Boston's South End/Roxbury line, vacant for years after a stint as Church of Scientology property, into a 68-room hotel with a five-story addition next door. It is the fourth redevelopment plan developers Tom Calus and Jas Bhogal have filed for the site since 2018, following an earlier 150-room hotel proposal, a 79-condo pivot, and a larger 150-room hotel version, none of which broke ground.

The place

The building stands on the border of Boston's South End and Roxbury neighborhoods. Built in 1875, it operated as a hotel only into the early 1900s before falling into use as low-rent apartments, then sat owned by the Church of Scientology from 2008 to 2019 without ever reopening as a hotel, and has been vacant since Calus and Bhogal bought it for $11 million in 2019.

The concept

Calus and Bhogal had already been pursuing a hotel on the site for a year before that purchase, first pitching a facade restoration fronting a 150-room tower in mid-2018; the Boston Planning and Development Agency approved a 12-story version with a rooftop restaurant, but the COVID-19 pandemic gutted hotel-market appetite and the pair pivoted to a 79-condo plan approved in late 2021. Rising interest rates then made that plan hard to finance, and by spring 2024 the developers reverted to a hotel again — a 13-story, 150-room design with a rooftop bar, approved by the BPDA board for roughly $70 million. Construction costs still didn't pencil out at that scale, so the team filed a fourth proposal in spring 2025: restoring the historic Alexandra itself and adding a five-story expansion on the vacant lot next door, for a smaller 68-room total with retail or restaurant space on the ground floor. Removing the tower that previous versions had stacked above the original facade — long a target of neighborhood opposition on height grounds — turned what had been a design fight into a design win, with the Boston Landmarks Commission's advisory review described as "overwhelmingly positive." A $6 million grant from Governor Maura Healey's 2024 economic development bill is earmarked for the facade restoration, and keeping more of the original structure standing, rather than demolishing it, is expected to qualify the project for historic tax credits.

Dining & wellness

The ground floor is planned for either retail or a restaurant; no operator has been named for either the hotel brand or any food-and-beverage concept.