YWCA strategy pays off

A new, 40-room hotel with a special mission is scheduled to open today in the historic and renovated YWCA on Clarendon Street in Boston's Back Bay.

Hotel 140, with its modest $129-a-night accommodations, is a key part of the plan to re-use the 78-year-old building located where the Back Bay meets the South End. The aim is to shore up the Federal structure and buttress the association's finances to further the YWCA's goal of providing reasonably priced housing for low- and moderate-income people.

The $52 million redevelopment of the 160,000-square-foot Y includes the installation of the hotel, a restaurant, 20,000 square feet of offices, and 88 units of single-room housing. The 56 apartments already in the building were also refurbished. Of the 144 housing units, 79 will be leased at below-market rents on a first come, first served basis, said Judy Parks, the YWCA's vice president of real estate.

In 2000, the nonprofit YWCA Boston, which owns the land and the building, sought a strategy to expand its major program: providing single-room housing.

''A nonprofit developer can't do that without federal tax credits," Parks said. ''To qualify, we had to transfer ownership of the building to a for-profit corporation we created that generates losses. It was emotional and complicated."

The transformation of the Y foretells of more changes afoot at Clarendon and Stuart streets where a parking lot now occupies another corner. Clarendon Associates, a joint venture of the local Beal Cos. LLP and the New York-based Related Cos. LP, hopes to start construction by the end of the year on a $220 million, 350-unit luxury residence of condominiums and rental apartments.

''We're excited that our venerable neighbor is growing," said Peter Nichols, a partner at Beal, which in 2003 agreed to purchase the 45,000-square-foot site from the John Hancock Life Insurance Co. for the 32-story tower it's planning. Also on the site is a 50,000-square-foot office building with a Hard Rock Café on the ground floor. ''We chose this location because it's an underused corner in the heart of the Back Bay."

Meanwhile, the mostly female-led YWCA development team created the for-profit Clarendon Residences LLC and obtained $15 million in federal low-income housing and historic tax credits. In this process, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In January 2004, construction started. Work is being completed in phases, with the hotel and single-room rentals ready this week and the offices in August, Parks said. During the work, The Lyric Stage Company and the Snowden International High School, a public school with about 100 students, remained on site and operating, Parks said.

Rents for the 56 studio and one-bedroom apartments, which are leased by the year and are all occupied, are $849 to $1,600 a month. The single rooms that are leased weekly cost the equivalent of $849 to $1,150 a month, affordable to someone earning $17,000 to $34,000 a year, she noted.

The renovation design by Perry Dean Rogers | Partners called for restoring the exterior of brick, limestone, granite, iron grill work, and ornamental balconies topped with a copper cornice. The main entrance on Clarendon Street, which features a triple arched arcade, was refurbished. The secondary entrance on Stuart Street, removed in the 1970s, was rebuilt to be accessible to the disabled.

Inside, the historic two-story lobby with curved marble stair, wood paneling, and coffered ceiling was preserved. Other sections were gutted; a pool, gym, and chapel were removed. A new floor was built for the basement, previously two stories below the water table, to stop leaks that required constant pumping. Air-handling, mechanical, and electrical systems were installed throughout the building. Now, custom furnishings complement expansive views in many rooms.

''Done by women, the furnishing is crisp, modern, and comfortable, not froufrou," Parks said.