AC Hotel Opens on 27-Acre Cambridge Campus

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

The AC Hotel Boston Cambridge recently opened in the Cambridge Discovery Park.

Cambridge, Mass.—The Bulfinch Cos. has opened AC Hotel Boston Cambridge, a 150-room hotel, in Cambridge Discovery Park (CDP), an 820,000-square-foot laboratory, office and technology campus in Cambridge, Mass. JLL’s leasing team led by Managing Director Pete Bekarian, Managing Director John Osten and Executive Vice President Molly Heath represented the lease for CDP.

“Cambridge Discovery Park is an ideal location for an innovative boutique hotel like AC Hotels By Marriott,” Michael Wilcox, Bulfinch senior vice president, director of leasing, said in a prepared statement. “We are pleased to bring a world-class hotel to the Park not only for our tenants, but for the surrounding community who will also benefit from its easily accessible location and cutting-edge services and amenities.”

The four-story hotel features 3,600 square feet of meeting space, an outdoor patio with fire pits and lounge seating, an indoor saltwater pool and a state-of-the-art fitness center. Park tenants and hotel guests will enjoy signature art and spaces, designed by Barcelona’s Antonio Catalan, throughout the hotel, including the AC Kitchen, AC Library, and AC Lounge. This is the second AC Hotel, owned and operated by Colwen Hotels, opened in the Boston area and the 13th opened in the U.S.

Surrounded by Alewife Brook Reservation, the 27-acre CDP is one of the largest campuses in Cambridge and consists of 400,000 square feet in three state-of-the-art buildings, plus a parking garage, an abundance of green space, powerful infrastructure and public utilities. Bulfinch and its partner, a fund affiliated with National Real Estate Advisors, developed one of the office buildings and the parking garage in 2010, achieving full occupancy at the opening with a lease through 2027 with Forrester Research.

“We are excited to see the completion of this next phase of development at Cambridge Discovery Park,” Bekarian said. “The visionary team at Bulfinch has continued to position the campus as one of the leaders in this region, and this is just the latest in what has become a robust list of amenities at the park.”

CDP and the new hotel are easily accessible by foot, a short five-minute shuttle ride from the Alewife MBTA Red Line Station, twenty minutes from Boston and Logan Airport, and just nine minutes to Route 128.

In addition to the new AC Hotel, CDP’s other amenities include outdoor seating, an on-site café, a full-service fitness and yoga center, Zagster bike-sharing, Zipcar, multiple bike racks, electric car charging stations, garage parking, ATM banking and a new riverfront park.

According to the Pinnacle Advisory Group, now is a great time for new hotel space in the Boston/Cambridge area. Driven by the city’s continued demand growth across all three primary demand segments, corporate, group and leisure, operators have been able to increase rates considerably.