New investors aim to rev up sales by re-pricing its units
Boston Globe
By Catherine Carlock
Despite an unparalleled location and a brand synonymous with luxury, sales at the St. Regis Residences in Boston’s Seaport District have been slow since construction wrapped on the waterside condominium tower nearly three years ago.
The sluggish pace of transactions prompted Cottonwood Group, the Los Angeles-based real estate private equity firm that lent $240 million to the property in 2023, to step in last summer and restructure the property’s construction loan. Cottonwood CEO Alex Shing said the move wasn’t a foreclosure, but rather a new partnership with developer Jon Cronin; the property relaunched sales at the start of the year.
“I have the confidence to say, ‘Hey, Jon, if it takes a little time, it takes a little time,’” Shing said in a recent interview. “We’re already getting very strong momentum.”
Two units went under contract in January, Shing said, priced at $3 million and $4 million, with another, priced at $8 million, under contract in February. Negotiations are underway for two additional units, priced at $2.5 million and $9 million. That’s the fastest sales pace yet at the 114-unit building, Shing said, where about 70 units total have been sold since 2022.
As part of the relaunch, Cottonwood and marketing firm The Collaborative Cos. re-priced 22 units. Some units on higher floors were less expensive than they should have been, Shing said, while some less desirable units were priced too high.
“Every building has four sides, and not all four sides are created equal from a view perspective,” said Sue Hawkes, managing director of The Collaborative Cos. “It’s important that that be taken into consideration when you price a building, so you can reward the best views … and you can give an opportunity for value to those that have less desirable views so people can get into a phenomenal building.”
TCC and Cottonwood had partnered before on EchelonSeaport, a three-building condo complex with 447 units immediately across Seaport Boulevard from the St. Regis Residences. Echelon, where the first building opened in 2019, is 97 percent sold, TCC’s most recent annual report shows. Given the “hugely successful” effort on Echelon, it made sense to team up again on the St. Regis, Hawkes said.
Beyond repricing, Cottonwood is planning to invest in upgrades to the property’s amenities — stronger wine and food programs, a lifestyle program and classes for the gym, perhaps even room service from the building’s ground-floor restaurant, Savr.
That heightened level of service is a key reason many residents are attracted to a hospitality-branded luxury building, Hawkes said. The team will also engage residents to learn more about what they’d like.
“That will turn the corner,” Hawkes said. “Nothing’s off the table.”
One St. Regis owner is Brian S. Dempsey, a former state representative who’s now a lobbyist on Beacon Hill. While the Dempsey family still lives in their Haverhill home, their ninth-floor St. Regis condo is a pied-à-terre for the workweek. Dempsey, who declined to specify his condo’s purchase price (many units in the building have been bought via shell companies that shield their owners’ identities from public disclosure), said he is longtime friends with Cronin and agreed to buy a unit before the building finished construction.
“After over 30 years of commuting back and forth, we decided to get a place in Boston, and the Seaport was really top on our list,” Dempsey said. “We’re in it for the long haul.”
Dempsey said he’s not too concerned about how long it has taken for units to sell, and he’s optimistic about the changes that Cottonwood and TCC will bring to the property. Shing’s involvement has been reassuring to residents, Dempsey said, particularly given Echelon’s success.
“They’re going to do what works to make the building 100 percent occupied,” he said.
There are, however, some issueswith the tower’s interior configuration that have proven frustrating to some.
The building was the last one designed by renowned architect Howard Elkus before his death in 2017, and features a distinctive sail-shaped facade meant to evoke the ocean it faces. But that design means that most interior windows and pillars are at a slight tilt slant rather than a right angle. There are more than five dozen floorplans for the 114 units. The building also sits on a tiny oceanfront lot — once home to two bars owned by Cronin — and its lobby has room for just a few people to stand comfortably, much smaller than some of the soaring, spacious lobbies seen in other luxury properties around town.
What’s more, construction is underway on another luxury condo tower about two blocks away — The Fallon Co.’s One Harbor Shore Drive, a 122-unit property on the Harborwalk overlooking Fan Pier Marina. The 16-story building is the final phase of Fallon’s 21-acre Fan Pier mixed-use development, which has been in the works for nearly three decades.
Still, Hawkes and Shing are bullish on the future of the 150 Seaport Blvd. tower.
“It’s a branded St. Regis on the water,” Hawkes said. “Those elements are things that other buildings don’t have. They can’t be replaced.”