Point Breeze to convert guest rooms to condos

Point Breeze Hotel owner Bob Matthews is converting the hotel into a private club with its 32 rooms to be sold as condominiums costing between $1 million to $3 million each.

Matthews said yesterday that the Point Breeze will still operate as a hotel where anyone can stay or dine at its restaurant, but the rooms themselves, most of them being renovated as suites, would be owned individually. Condo owners would decide when they would occupy their condo suites and when they would be open to island visitors seeking lodging.

The move, Phase One of Matthews' Point Breeze project, is part of a five-hotel/resort plan that Matthews is developing in Nantucket, Palm Beach, Fla., Aspen, Colo., Stowe, Vt. and a 600-acre island in the Bahamas that he is currently trying to purchase. He said he believes he is responding to a need by wealthy resort visitors who do not want to deal with the maintenance and amenities hassles of homeownership.

"It's really, really simple; I just looked at myself and the baby boomers and thought, 'What do you do when you get to your house on the island? It needs some paint; I need to call the plumber," Matthews said. "Wouldn't it be neat to have a swimming pool, wouldn't it be neat to have to have a tennis club, wouldn't it be neat to have a fitness center, wouldn't it be neat to have a cabaret with Harry Connick, Jr. playing there?

"It came out of me just personally when I was there."

Matthews got a special permit for his major commercial development of the Point Breeze Hotel at 77 Easton St. in July 2005 and HDC approval on Nov. 29 of that year. What is being called Phase One also includes reconstruction of the original hotel as a 4,091-square-foot addition to the current main building.

Matthews received his 4-1- approval from the Historic District Commission in just two meetings, pleasing the commission with his commitment to rebuild the original hotel to its former grandeur and authenticity.

Additionally, Matthews' crews will be connecting the addition, main building and restaurant with 14 underground parking spaces, and a new swimming pool behind the hotel. Phase Two, not entirely permitted yet, includes the addition of more residences along with three tennis courts along Easton Street where the cottages are now with a 49-space parking garage beneath that.

Although reconstruction of the Point Breeze stalled during the latter part of last winter and into this spring because Matthews stripped much of its sheathing and removed all of the first floor without a demolition permit from the HDC, and installed a steel frame to support the building, Matthews got back to work just before Memorial Day Weekend.

"We're fully permitted," he said yesterday. "We got our building permit last Thursday. We can work inside during the summer, and I'm hoping the steel is in in the next two or three weeks. If we could close our walls in, I think it could be a really good program."

HDC Administrator James Grieder said that Matthews is free to do that work with the permits he has now.

Matthews said that he already has handshake commitments to sell about 50 percent of the former hotel's rooms. He plans to open Phase One next summer, with Phase Two scheduled to be completed in 2009.

"It's really about a lifestyle; making it easy for you and retaining the old charm of the Point Breeze," said Matthews. "It's the best of the old, but

the best of the new." I