Kneeland Street condo tower on hold until loan interest rates come down

The Zoning Board of Appeal this week gave Hudson Group another year to begin construction of its planned 22-story, 115-unit condo building at 150 Kneeland St. near South Station.

The delay means a holdup in plans for an apartment building on Oxford Street in Chinatown to which Hudson Group had pledged between $5 million and $7 million for construction of 20 apartments aimed at people making no more than 30% to 50% of the Boston area median income.

At a hearing earlier this week, Hudson Group's attorney, Don Wiest, cited an increase in the cost of financing for the reason it hadn't started work on the project since its approval by the BPDA and the zoning board in 2021.

"The challenge for this kind of high-rise project on a small floorplate is that it's inherently expensive on a per-foot basis," he said. "Money has gotten very expensive for construction loans throughout the course of the past year, and we need those conditions to improve for the numbers to come into alignment."

The board vote extends the deadline for its approval from March 11 of this year to March 11 of next year.

The building will replace what's left of a long closed nightclub - Hudson Group says it has, at least cleaned up the remains of that. Back in 2018, Hudson Group proposed a 230-room hotel on the site, but the pandemic killed that idea and the company filed new plans in 2021 for a similarly sized residential building.

In addition to condos, the new building will have ground-floor commercial space. It will have no parking spaces.

150 Kneeland St. filings.

Watch the hearing: