IQHQ Buys Historic Boston Property

The Buckminster. Image courtesy of IQHQ

Continuing a steady run of activity in Boston, IQHQ has acquired The Buckminster, a former hotel in the city’s Kenmore Square area. The acquisition is part of IQHQ’s ongoing developments in the adjacent Fenway market—primarily Fenway Center, a $1 billion project that kicked off this spring.

Located at the triangular intersection of Brookline Avenue and Beacon Street, the flatiron-shaped hotel closed its doors in March 2020. As to its future, IQHQ is saying only that it “plans to work closely with the community and City officials to bring forth an improved future for this prominent Kenmore Square site.”

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The six-story hotel closed as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Boston Globe reported in April. The luxury hotel opened around 1897, well before Fenway Park itself, in 1912. The Buckminster changed hands over the decades and was taken over by the Army in World War II. In 1966, the hotel was bought by a junior college and used as a dorm till the school lost its accreditation and went bankrupt in the late 1970s. As of 1980, the Buckminster was a rooming house, but by the 1990s it was a hotel again, with more and smaller rooms.

Developed by IQHQ in a joint venture with Boston-based Meredith Management, Fenway Center will be the city’s largest air rights development since 1980.

Back in February 2020, IQHQ acquired a 285,000-square-foot lab-and-office building at 190 Brookline in the Fenway neighborhood, adjacent to Fenway Center. The seller was Equity Commonwealth.