Suspicions Grow That New England Life Building Will Be Sold, Converted to Hotel

BOSTON-Carpenter & Co. is reportedly considering buying the New England Life building here in the Back Bay and refashioning it into a luxury hotel and condominium project. The Cambridge-based development company has been working with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. on the South Boston Convention Center Hotel and would most likely partner with Starwood’s luxury hotel division, St. Regis.

Despite these reports, Peter Harrington, spokesman for MetLife Inc., which owns the landmark building, insists to GlobeSt.com that no sale in planned, although last week, MetLife reportedly moved 300 of its employees to another facility. “Mr. Friedman has not submitted any proposals and there have been no negotiations between MetLife and Mr. Friedman,” Harrington reports. Richard Friedman is the president of Carpenter & Co.

Starwood and Friedman have faced many difficulties financing the $1,120-per-night-room convention center hotel, but a luxury hotel here will probably not have the same problems. “A couple-of-hundred-a-night-room hotel where there is no question about the market–and the data shows that those kind of hotels lead the pack in Boston–will not be difficult to finance,” Patrick Moscaritolo, director of the Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, tells GlobeSt.com.