An 11-story block-long office building at 31 St. James St. in the Back Bay, known as the ‘Park Square Building,’ is now poised to be redeveloped into 490 apartments, The Boston Globe first reported last week.
New York-based Vanbarton Group has proposed what would become Boston’s largest office-to-residential conversion project, entailing the redevelopment of the 540,000-square-foot property located on St. James Street between Arlington and Berkeley streets. If approved, the project would reportedly cost as much as $410 million.
The building, which was once the largest in New England, has reportedly struggled financially since the pandemic and was sold in April at foreclosure for $95 million to LNR Partners, a Miami-based subsidiary of commercial real estate giant Starwood Property Trust.
Existing ground-floor tenants, including French furniture retailer Roche Bobois and the restaurant, Fire + Ice, intend to continue occupying 30,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, according to the Globe, although nearly two dozen office tenants are expected to vacate their respective spaces by the end of the year.