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End of an era on Cambridge Street: Rappaport family sells piece of the West End it still owned
By adamg on Thu, 02/01/2024 - 10:34am
Charles River Plaza Co., started by developer Jerome Rappaport in the 1960s, this week sold the building housing what is now the Wyndham Hotel at Blossom and Cambridge streets for $125 million to the Maryland-based firm that was already running the hotel, according to Suffolk County Registry of Deeds records.
The sale to RLJ Lodging Trust of Bethesda, MD, recorded Tuesday, references the building's original 1966 lease to Holiday Inn.
The 13-story hotel on a half-acre lot, along with the adjoining Charles River Plaza mall and office building, was part of Rappaport's and his investors' remaking of the West End, in which the city condemned almost the entire neighborhood, knocking everything down so that Rappaport's group could put up his "If You Lived Here" towers along Storrow Drive and Leverett Circle, along with the mall/office building and hotel. Charles River Plaza Co. sold the mall building in 2000. The total West End project encompassed 46 acres.
RLJ currently owns 96 hotels in 23 states.
Rappaport died in 2021.
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Comments
Rappaport is dead so its doesn’t mean much …
… but good riddance to his last hold on the West End.
How's it any better for an
How's it any better for an out-of-state megacorporation to own the hotel?
Thanks
... what?
Why?
Why do you have so much hate for one person. I mean it’s not like a single person can bulldoz a bunch of land.
Robert Moses
Would like to dispute your assertion.
So am I supposed to say..
.. good riddance also to the bulldozer drivers?
More like the end of an error
More like the end of an error.
Sadly, the error remains
The decimation of the West End and its ridiculously bad replacement are still with us.
What errors were made?
What errors were made?
Dump
That hotel is a dump.
There used to be a great movie theatre here
called the Charles Cinema. It had three screens, but the one you wanted was the huge one upstairs, a perfect place for 70mm extravaganzas like Gettysburg or Lawrence of Arabia.
Charles Cinema memories
I went there often. I saw the first showing of Star Wars there in 1977, which was a huge event. Before and after the movies we went to the West End Tennis Club across the street. To finish off the night at 3 AM, Buzzy's Roast Beef was just a couple of blocks away.
Saw Star Wars at the
Charles Cinema on the day it opened. Such a great memory!
Best Sound System
I saw "The Concert For Bangla Desh" there in 1972 and "1776" in 1973. "Woodstock" also opened there. It was the theater with the most state-of-the-art sound system at the time, so it was good for those kind of films.
Before my time
But I love hearing about these memories
Minor point about removing buildings on Cambridge St
That part of Cambridge St was kind of destroyed way before the destruction of the West End in the late 50's early 60's. The buildings on the north side of Cambridge were removed to widen Cambridge St from the Joy St portal to Charles Circle to make room for the maintenance tracks for the Blue Line. The rest of the north side of Cambridge St was destroyed in the 20s when they widened Cambridge St.
https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/images/commonwealt...
Edit to add a wikipedia photo showing how street was widened for the Joy St portal.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joy_Street_portal,_July_7,_1915.jpg