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12-story hotel could rise in downtown alley next to Orpheum Theatre

Developers propose transforming a nearly 200-year-old building near Boston Common.

A rendering of a proposed hotel redevelopment at 7-9 Hamilton Place in downtown Boston.RODE Architects

One of the quirky alleys off Tremont Street near the Boston Common could be transformed with a 12-story hotel where a nearly 200-year-old building now stands.

Developers this week filed plans with the city to build an 80-room hotel at 7-9 Hamilton Place, a stretch near the Boston Common and the MBTA’s Park Street station that dead-ends at the Orpheum Theatre.

The building was first constructed as a town home in 1825 and remodeled as a commercial building in the 1880s, state historical records show. It is still used as commercial office space today.

The Alex Hamilton Realty Trust, City Realty, and CRM Property Corp. have proposed restoring the “dilapidated” property’s existing façade as the three-story base of the hotel, “grounding the new building within its urban historical context,” according to a Feb. 8 filing to the Boston Planning and Development Agency.

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The hotel could rise up to 125 feet — an “as-of-right” project that won’t require a zoning variance from the city. The developers paid $7.9 million to buy the site last May, according to a Suffolk County deed.

“The proposed project will restore the existing building facade to its former architectural expression with rich period detailing and materials typical in character to those found throughout the Ladder Blocks District,” the developers wrote in the Feb. 8 filing.

The development team is avoiding casting new shadows on the Boston Common — an issue that has bedeviled other taller buildings in this neighborhood — by pulling back a portion of the building’s roof, which also allows for creating an open-air roof deck with park views. They also plan to open a ground-floor café. The building would have an eight-stall bike storage room, but no parking spaces for vehicles.

“Due to the availability of public transportation and the walkability of the surrounding neighborhood, the hotel will rely on more non-vehicular modes of transportation to access the site,” the city filing reads.

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City Realty expects to start construction in early 2023 and finish by late 2024.


Catherine Carlock can be reached at catherine.carlock@globe.com. Follow her @bycathcarlock.