South Carolina Company Pitches 184-Room Hotel For Fenway

Gas stations are increasingly hard to come by in Fenway, and another could disappear if a hotel proposal gets approved. 

South Carolina-based OTO Development filed a letter of intent Tuesday with the Boston Planning & Development Agency for an eight-story, 184-room hotel at 1241 Boylston St., the Boston Herald reports. The property is currently home to a Shell gas station. The hospitality development and management company has an option to lease the property from owner Patra Fenway LLC, which bought the property in 2006 for $4M. 

Star Market spent $17M on a Gulf gas station down the street from the Shell station earlier this year and intends to use the property for parking at its adjacent grocery store. 

The 105K SF building proposed to replace Shell would be as tall as 90 feet and feature lounges, meeting space and underground parking. OTO’s portfolio of select-service and extended-stay hotels across the U.S. ranges from a Hampton Inn & Suites in Manchester, Connecticut (the company’s closest property to Boston), to a Hyatt Place in downtown Chicago. 

“Our intent is to develop an elegant, first-quality new hospitality facility that will supply badly needed additional hotel rooms to the area and contribute meaningfully to the fast-transforming Boylston Street,” Dain Torpy founding partner Donald Wiest, who is OTO’s Boston attorney, said in the letter of intent. “The proposed hotel use will complement the primarily residential nature of this important urban thoroughfare, helping to sustain a lively pedestrian realm.”