Florida-based Stiles Corp. and West Coast real estate firm Shorenstein Properties said late Wednesday they will build a tower in a joint venture in South End.
The companies say they acquired 2 acres at the intersections of South Boulevard, East/West Boulevard and the East/West Boulevard Lynx Blue Line Station, where they will develop a 23-story, 385,000-square-foot office tower. The building will also include 11,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.
The acquisition includes the buildings that currently house Tupelo Honey and The Manchester as well as an adjoining parking lot that's used for those restaurants. The seller was Browder Harris Group.
The two buildings and 2 acres included in the sale traded for $21.5 million, according to a source with knowledge of the deal — a sizable transaction even for booming South End, where new office towers are announced seemingly weekly.
Construction is expected to begin within the next year on the tower. A spokeswoman for Stiles declined to provide a more specific estimated groundbreaking.
Hastings Architecture has been appointed to design the tower but a rendering of the building was not immediately available.
Stiles and Shorenstein say there is potential to accommodate up to 1 million square feet in future phases for "larger users," but it wasn't immediately clear if that would be in one or more towers onsite.