
Members of the Algonquin Club voted Tuesday night to sell the club’s Back Bay home to Hexagon Properties.
No further details were available after the vote and discussion, which went on for more than two hours Tuesday evening.
The vote was the culmination of several town hall-style meetings between members and Hexagon representatives since the company, helmed by noted philanthropist Sandra Edgerley, announced last month it had offered to buy the club at 217 Commonwealth Ave. for $25 million. The Algonquin is one of Boston’s oldest social clubs, incorporated in 1886.
Edgerley has committed to maintaining and operating the property as a private club, as well as making an “eight-figure” investment in restorations.
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“We are honored by this overwhelming vote of confidence from the membership of the Algonquin Club of Boston tonight,” Edgerley said in a statement. “We look forward to the great responsibility of stewarding this shared vision for generations to come.”
Approval of the sale needed a super majority of the club’s approximately 200 members, said Ken Tutunjian, who’s been an Algonquin member for 18 years.
Tutunjian said that he cast his ballot in favor of the sale a few days before Tuesday’s count.
“It’s time,” Tutunjian said a few hours prior to the vote. “All clubs are having a hard time. . . . If you look at the clubs that are super active in town they have a big sports component to it, and the social dining clubs are not keeping pace. Hexagon wants to make it a hybrid of both.”
Algonquin’s membership has dwindled over the years, he said, adding he is excited for plans to attract a younger membership.
“I’m happy that they came about,” Tutunjian said of Hexagon. “The club will stay a club.”
Hexagon has not made its plans for the club public, but Edgerley has previously said she is planning on a “significant” restoration with a vision to make the Algonquin into a “premiere destination to gather among an innovative, diverse, multigenerational membership.”
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This is Edgerley’s second attempt at owning and operating a private social club in the Back Bay. Amid neighborhood opposition, Hexagon withdrew its plans last month to convert Haddon Hall, an 11-story office building on the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Berkeley Street, into a private social club.
The $25 million offer is considered a below-market price for the 36,000-square-foot property if it were to operate as something other than a club. According to documents obtained by the Globe last month, Edgerley offered to pay a $10 million premium if Hexagon decides to close the club and redevelop the building into something else within the first 10 years after the sale. The premium would drop by $1 million annually over an additional 10 years.
Katheleen Conti can be reached at kconti@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeKConti.