Proposed Moody Street hotel will petition for special use permit in 2026

The long-anticipated conversion of a set of vacant buildings on Moody Street into a hotel and performance space will again be up for discussion by City Council in the new year.

The City Council last month set Jan. 12 as the new date for a public hearing for a special use permit for the location. The hearing initially had been set for its Nov. 24 meeting.

According to Paul Finger of Paul Finger Associates, the development firm working on the buildings’ redevelopment, this delay is procedural. Finger said the firm wants to make sure all city councilors are able to vote on the special permit. Because the two newly elected councilors, Emma Tzioumis and Tim King, won’t join the council until Jan. 4, the development team wants to wait until Tzioumis and King are sworn in before opening the hearing.

In plans submitted to the City Council, the buildings’ current owner, Michael Colomba, has proposed construction of a mixed-use building on a set of lots he collectively refers to as 220 Moody St. The building will include a restaurant, performing arts events space, owner’s apartment and 42-room hotel. 

Colomba is seeking a special use permit to construct the building with a higher floor area ratio — the ratio between the building’s footprint and the size of its lot — than Waltham allows by right. The plans lay out details of the special permit as well as a proposed building layout, utility and stormwater assessments, and a traffic mitigation plan.

The current buildings lie on a patch of land overlooking the Charles River. They have stood empty for years, and the city has condemned some of them as a result of fire damage and a 2021 roof collapse. After the roof collapse, Colomba told WCAC he hoped “the city [would] take this as a catalyst to speed things up” in the building approval process. 

A previous attempt to redevelop the properties in 2011 stalled after being approved by multiple city bodies. Colomba purchased the properties in 2015; three years later he received City Council approval to redevelop it into a hotel, but his plans similarly ground to a halt because of a conflict over air rights. 

Colomba’s most recent development attempt has garnered the approval of multiple city bodies. The Traffic Commission signed off on the project’s traffic impact assessment in June 2024, and the Conservation Commission in December 2024 approved the proposal, saying the development should not impact the Charles River if it conforms to agreed-upon conditions. The Historical Commission this August okayed the destruction of the current buildings, ruling that they aren’t of historical value and don’t need to be preserved.Finger said that aside from the special permit hearing, the development team’s next steps are to complete construction documents for the project and to petition the City Council for a building permit. The team will also have to check with the Historical Commission before starting demolition on the current buildings to assess any damage it might cause.